Thousands of fish dropped from the sky

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/31/thousands-of-fish-dropped-from.html

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My God! They couldn’t even give them little parachutes?

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  1. Everything is air-droppable at least once.
    – The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
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I wonder what this does to the lakes ecosystems.

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Of course, someone beat me to the Les Nessman reference, lol.

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Can they airdrop me there, so I can go fishing without having to spend a week packing in?

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Hey, like, shouldn’t the freemarket decide where the fish go…or whatever?

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Came here for this; was not disappointed.

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As god is my witness I thought this is how Jesus fed the multitudes!

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Other critters dropped from planes: mice, beavers, sheepdogs, cats, bears(!) and lots of others.

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Just don’t let United Airlines see this.

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They did this in the Sierra Nevadas in California. Then the frogs became endangered because the fish eat them, so ecologists are killing everything and then reintroducing the frogs.

That’s what I came for!

I had a similar question: Wouldn’t the lakes “need” stocking only once?

On further thought, available food in the lake is just one of many factors that determine fish population, so what the fishermen miss, probably wouldn’t survive till the next year/3 years/decade anyway.

Some mountain lakes become self-sustaining, but others winter-kill. Most western states have stopped stocking invasive species in favor of native species, even in lakes that did not historically support trout populations. Native cutthroat trout tend to stick to an insect diet, compared to browns, which quickly develop a gape-limited diet (eat anything that fits in their mouth) or brook trout, which also become piscavorous and often canibalistic.

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The lakes I fish are starting to get more cutbows lately with native browns and rainbows competing with Kokanee salmon. Then there’s the northern pikes which eat everything.

With a name like @DukeTrout you better know what you’re talking about.

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I recently fished a lake with rainbows, cutts, brookies, and kokanee. I would be sign casting to big brookies, and a herd of small kokanee would blitz through, eat my fly, and spook the big trout. Eventually, I figured out to just wait and not set the hook, but they would sometimes just hook themselves.

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There’s a bit about this in Chuck Yeagers autobiography. About a general who wants a lake stocked with golden trout or something like that.

I read that book when I was 12 and remember this fact well. I never ever know what the date is though.