Utah Department of Wildlife Stocking Lakes By Dropping Fish From Planes

[crappiewisdom]

I'd never seen anything like this before. Interesting.

YouTube

[Alphahawk]

Been going on the 68 years I’ve been around. First time I actually witnessed it myself was in early 70s in the Army. They would stock lakes for missile sites in remote areas. No other way to get the fish in.


Regards


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[Ketchn]

yep seen that since I was a little one , them high mountain lakes are very tough to stock any other way .
the alternative I saw involved not many fish and lots of fish loss and lots a man feet

[tenncrappie]

Started doing this with choppers 40 years ago in Tenn.

[SuperDave336]

Wow, I had to look that up.

[ClearCreek]

During my career I was involved several times with stocking high-mountain lakes with a helicopter, sometimes riding in the chopper and operating the control panel that released the fish into the lakes and sometimes on the "ground crew" loading the fish into the small tanks attached to the struts on the copper. Some of the lakes the only way to stock them was with aircraft of some sort, and for us a helicopter worked the best due to the tight spots (cirques) that the lakes were in. Also, because some of the lakes were only half ice free during early August when we were doing the stocking, a helicopter was a little more precise in getting the fish into the water rather than on the ice.

Wilderness regulations require the aircraft to be at least 50 off the water so the fish have to fall at least that far. Survival of the stocked fish is pretty high.

Stocking is still done every other year in the area where I was working.

ClearCreek

[lowe rider]

Talk about a belly flop.

[Special K]

Awesome. I'd heard of this, but never saw any video or anything until now.