Ever wonder how Colorado’s alpine lakes are stocked with so many fish each year? Here’s your answer:
Colorado Park and Wildlife (CPW) recently released footage of planes dropping cutthroat trout into high alpine lakes nestled around the state this summer.
“Our hatcheries grow flying fish! Not really. CPW flies them in by the thousands,” the tweet from CPW reads. “WATCH CPW pilot make a precision drop from 100′ above Ptarmigan Lake at 12,306 feet.”
WATCH CPW wildlife pilot Larry Gepfert describe how 1-inch fish ‘float down to the water’ and survive aerial stocking at a 90%-plus rate. On this day he stocked 40,000 fish into 50 lakes in a few hours. High alpine lakes in So Colo are current focus. (2.2) https://t.co/gtmv83NtN5
— CPW SE Region (@CPW_SE)
CWP plans to stock nearly 275,000 fish into 240 lakes this summer. The majority of this year’s stockings will take place in the southern half of Colorado’s mountainous region, while aerial efforts next year will focus primarily in the northern half of the state.
Fish are deployed from planes typically at slower speeds, ranging between 85 to 90 mph. The fish have very little mass, making it easy for them to float down to the water. More than 90 percent are estimated to survive, according to officials.
“We’re about 100 feet above the lake and as we’re coming across and as they dump, they almost stop immediately as they come out of the airplane,” Gepfert said, who is approaching 20 years as a pilot for CPW. “They are very tiny, the fish today were about one-inch in size. Their heads are heavier and so they tend to elongate vertically and drop with the water and then they just go into the lake. They did studies years ago and the survival rates are in the 90 percentile.”
Officials say it can take up to two years for a fish to grow to a catchable size of 10 inches.
One pilot stocked 40,000 fish into 50 alpine lakes within just a few hours. The process is much more efficient compared to many years ago when fish were loaded into milk cans and hauled up the mountain via horseback.
The second round of aerial stockings on Monday and Tuesday are set to drop fish into lakes in Delta and Gunnison counties. July stocking efforts included Gunnison, Hinsdale, Mineral, Pitkin, San Juan, and San Miguel counties.
Native cutthroat trout, golden trout, and arctic grayling will be stocked at the Mt. Shavano State Fish Hatchery later this fall.
This content was originally published here.
