The Utah Division of Wildlife is showing off its fish stocking skills using an airplane to drop thousands of fish into hard-to-reach lakes.
“This week we stocked around 200 high-elevation lakes across the state,” the agency said. “These lakes are not accessible by vehicle and other means of stocking.”
The fish are between 1-3 inches long, so they flutter down slowly to the water. Aerial fish stocking in Utah is an effective method of stocking and has been since the mid-1950s. Post-stocking netting surveys show that the survival of aerial-stocked fish is incredibly high. The airplane holds hundreds of pounds of water and can drop 35,000 fish in a single flight without reloading.
So next time you see a bunch of skydiving fish or flying fish, you know why.
Now that we know it’s ok to stock fish from an airplane, we just want to warn you that eating fish while flying an airplane is not a good idea.