Anyone up for some fly fishing?
For those that have ever cast a line and thought to themselves “this is great and all, but I wish the fish were flying down from the sky instead,” have I got some great news for you. If you wanted to re-invent the term “fly fishing,” all you would have to do is time up a trip to Utah when the state is restocking their lakes.
When necessary, the wildlife resources division of Utah will drops thousands of fish into their lakes via an airplane, and it’s as entertaining to watch as you would imagine. With a touch of a button, the payload of fish and water is dumped out of the sky above the bodies of water, and it has to be the most exciting (or terrifying) thing to ever happen in a fish’s life.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources claims that drops such as these are less stressful for the fish, though I’d like to ask the fish and see what they have to say about it. Airdropping them is also believed to be more cost effective, and less time consuming than other methods (like the patented, tried-and-true fish tube).
Only fish that are smaller in weight are able to make these drops, since the air tension allows for them to almost “float” down to the water below. Fish that are larger would likely not survive the fall to the water, though the fish are dropped with water from the airplane to lessen the impact (in theory). The wildlife division officially ensures that the fish that are dropped from the moving plane have a 95-99% chance of survival, and I’m unofficially reporting that 95% of them have a kick-ass, awesome time.
Airdropping thousands of fish is definitely an interesting visual to witness. If you’ve never seen it before, you’ll have to check out the video below, which is captioned:
“Ever wonder what it looks like to repopulate fish in a lake? This video from Utah wildlife officials shows the incredible process. According to Reuters, Utah has been utilizing aerial fish restocking methods since the 1950s to fill over 200 remote lakes.”
Those fish are either having the time of their life on the way down, or they’re having little fish heart attacks. Someone in the reply section compared it to how you would feel if you were swimming in an indoor pool with other people, and then all of the sudden, the bottom fell out of the pool and you went plummeting down hundreds of feet to a larger body of water.
When you put it like that…SIGN ME UP!
