The Kid Should See This:
This low-flying plane isn’t just taking a scenic ride. It’s about to stock the lake it’s flying over with up to 1,000 native fish… by dropping them from the sky. It’s a strategy that’s been used since 1956, a more efficient option than hiking by foot to the lakes with fish in large buckets.
According to Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, via Pattern, more than 95% of the fish survive the drop. Hallows explains, “They kind of flutter down, so they don’t impact very hard. They flutter with the water and they do really well.”
This is one of those things where your initial reaction is, “WTF? That can’t be a good thing!”
I had a very good friend who did this for a living in Colorado. The challenge was getting low enough (so the fish don’t dry out) and slow enough (so the fish aren’t killed in release). This could be especially challenging in high mountain lakes with few entry and exit options.
He had a rating system for the challenge, 1, 2 or 3 screamers. One screamer is when the plane was screaming, two screamer when he and the plane were screaming, three screamer when he, the plane, and the fish were all screaming!
One notable example is South Colony Lake in the Sangre de Cristo range. An 11k ft lake at the base of 3k ft box canyon where the only way to drop was to enter over the back of the mountain, fly down the face of the as close as possible, full flaps, zero throttle, level out at the lake and hope the aircraft would slow down enough to drop before the dam. This was a three screamer.
On a lighter note, the DoW got a lot of phone calls from conspiracy theorists and concerned citizens who witnessed this and thought something shady was going.
LOL Well, with those flight characteristics, can you blame them!? 🙂
Dang it, now I want fish for dinner.
So there I was, just sitting here in my boat, minding my own business. And suddenly out of nowhere I get carpet bombed with fish! Bloody carp no less.