Trout stocking for recreational
fishing began in the
19th century in
California (lakes above 1800 meters did
not have native populations of trout), mainly using non-native
brook trout and
brown trout.
In
1948, the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG), in order to reach more
backcountry lakes in the
Cascades and
Sierra Nevada, started dropping the
fingerlings out of
airplanes to stock
the lakes.
The Department now raises and plants over 57 million fish annually, including approximately 16 million trout,
to restock the existing populations of both native and non-native trout. (Judging by fish license purchases,
there are about 2.4 million people in California who fish) About 8 million of the trout are grown to one-half pound each, the rest are released
as fingerlings. Some are released and planted by truck, or by hand, and the rest are thrown out of planes travelling at 200 miles per hour.
The DFG Web site has no statistics on either the accuracy of their aerial trout dumps nor the survival rate of these little fish.
"We certainly do not wish to cause widespread panic, but we are hereby
warning the public to be on the lookout for falling trout.
We base this warning on an alarming article from the Bangor Daily
News, sent in by alert reader Jane Heart, headlined TORPEDO APPROACH
USED TO STOCK LAKES WITH TROUT. According to the article, the Maine
Department of Inland Fisheries is restocking lakes by dropping trout
from airplanes. A hatchery official notes that the trout, which weigh
about a pound each, drop from 100 to 150 feet "like hundreds of little
torpedoes."
This article should cause extreme concern on the part of anyone who is
familiar with gravity, which was discovered in 1864 by Sir Isaac Newton,
who was sitting under a tree when an apple landed on his head, killing
him instantly. A one-pound trout would be even worse. According to our
calculations, if you dropped the trout from 150 feet, it would reach a
speed of . . . let's see, 150 feet times 32 feet per second, at two
pints to the liter, minus the radius of the hypotenuse, comes to . . . a
*high rate of speed*. Anybody who has ever seen a photograph showing
the kind of damage that a trout traveling that fast can inflict on the
human skull knows that such photographs are very valuable. I paid $20
for mine.
- Dave Barry
Sources:
Dave Barry, Miami Herald, Dec 9, 1990. http://www.armory.com/~peterr/humor/Dave_Barry/901208-trout
California Department of Fish and Game, http://www.dfg.ca.gov
Cosmo Garvin, "Flying Fish Devour Frogs," http://www.newsreview.com/issues/Sacto/2001-01-18/frontline.asp
Roland A. Knapp, "Non-Native Trout in Natural Lakes of the Sierra Nevada: An Analysis of Their Distribution and Impacts on Native Aquatic Biota ,
Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final report to Congress, vol. III, Assessments and scientific basis for management options," http://www.highsierrahikers.org/issue_fish_main.html