The Rainbow Trout is one of the most popular ( and widespread ) biz fish in North America . An alone Synthetic Fish illustrates how a once minor Northern California specie take over the continent .
In the years that follow World War II , America experienced a period of economic growth and successfulness unlike any that had occurred before . Wealth spread to a tolerant spectrum of Americans who , at the same time , were love an unprecedented amount of leisure meter . The twelve - time of day day , typical of the other nineteenth one C , had largely given way and eight - time of day workdays had become received . Thanks for the most part to the exploit of the labor union , many Americans were even relish two - day weekends and paid vacations for the first time . And thanks to the engineering science and manufacturing ability develop during the war , Americans could cheaply buy the easiest and most effective fishing gear ever develop . Spinning reel , fiberglass rod , and long strand of monofilament made it easy even for novice to catch fish . Americans responded by making fishing one of the most pop sport in the country . One person in five , about 21 million the great unwashed , went angle in 1955 , together spending 400 million days seek to catch Pisces , a immense addition over the prewar days .
Almost as crucial , the conclusion of World War II also yielded an abundance of surplus military airplanes as well as a orotund number of demobilized pilot light . Forty - yr - previous Al Reese was the first to join the California Department of Fish and Game . A former barnstormer and crop duster , Reese spend the warfare year prepare army cadets to vaporize . When that spear was over , Reese plough his can - do mind to another problem , stocking California ’s abundant and often distant great deal lakes . He was sure he could do it from the tune .
First , Reese tried block the fish in chalk blocks and parachute them in ice pick container . Both of these techniques , though , proved grievous and unmanageable . And so , one sidereal day , Reese and his assistants tried a simple proficiency . They put fifty trout and some water into a five - gallon can and threw it out the window toward a hatchery pond about 350 foundation below . They missed , and the can bounced along the rocks nearby or else . But when observers recover the misrepresented metal rubble , they found sixteen fish still swimming in the small amount of water supply that remain . It was a sensational result for fishery managers who had long been telling anglers not to discombobulate Pisces back , but to mildly place them back in the water .
Assured by this mishap that the fish could endure the impact , Reese arrange out to learn whether they could make the tripwithout the auspices of atomic number 50 and water . Reese and his partner grabbed some more fish , hopped in a fomite , and strike the gas until they were move seventy - five statute mile per 60 minutes down the hatchery road . At that point , the men grabbed Pisces , one by one , and guard them out the window for two minutes , at which point they pulled them back in and dropped them back into the piss . And once again , the fish survive .
These and other experiments were enough to convince Reese and his superiors that his plan could figure out . Reese persuaded the department to purchase a military surplus C-45 transport planing machine and also hire another pilot light named Carrol Faist , a man who had flown forty missions on B-24 Liberator hoagy in the Pacific . One July 24-hour interval in 1949 , Reese and Faist set off with a plane full of trout for their first drop into an actual alpine lake . While one of them fly the plane ( history does not register who had which job ) , the other go into the back , loaded up a hopper full of fish , and peered through a four - inch - by - fourinch trap turn out in the bottom of the plane . As soon as the lake was seeable through the gob , the bombardier free the fish . The sudden step-down in system of weights stimulate the plane to take a hop twenty understructure higher , making it a tricky and grievous job for the man in back . Nevertheless , the drop was a success .
observer on the earth describe a swarm of mist that suddenly appeared behind the plane , full of the just distinguishable dark shapes of small Pisces . After hanging still for a second , or so it seemed , the fish tumbled through the gentle wind in a spray of urine and splashed like raindrops in the midriff of the lake . Many of them , according to the observers , pull through .
That ’s not to say it was a pleasant experience for the fish . drop out of a plane that was about two hundred feet in the air and traveling at a f number of around two hundred miles per hour ( distinctive of planting run both then and today ) , the fingerlings would have hit the pee with a perpendicular speed of about thirty miles per time of day . ten after Reese and Faist first dropped their Pisces , I talked to a biologist who witnessed a like case while snorkel in one of the lakes of the Sierra Nevada . Many of the Pisces were ripped in half on impact , he tell me , and many others were so dazed they now sank to the bottom , never to recover .
Nevertheless , Reese and Faist turn over their experiment a achiever , and they became even more confident with each ladder . Except when the bombardier miss ( yes , it ’s bechance ) and the fish bring in the trees , they found that Pisces dropped from airplane in reality survived well than Pisces that had to make the trip bouncing around for minute in a can on the back of a mule . It was loud too . It only cost about four dollar bill to farm animal one thousand Pisces from an airplane , equate to about twenty dollars by other methods .
For the record , California was n’t the first to drop fish from the airwave . Other innovators in Quebec and New York had experimented and even use the technique on a pocket-sized graduated table before and during the war . But within a class , California had overshadow their efforts and shown the world what the future of fish stocking would look like . They even tried other fauna as well .
They drop beaver outfitted with extra parachute , as well as turkeys and partridges . On occasion they dropped peewee and aquatic plants into the lakes they had just stockpile to provide food and cover for the trout . But fish were by far the most common metal money to make the trip . By the end of the fifties , California and many other State were routinely using airplanes and helicopter to stockpile the backcountry . Thousands of antecedently fishless lakes were before long full of trout . It was a boon , no doubt , for the millions of recreational anglers who emerge after World War II . But even more , it was a blessing for the trout .
[ top art courtesy ofMuppets Wiki ]
Anders Halverson is an award - winning journalist with a PhD in environmental science from Yale University .
An totally Synthetic Fish : How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World is available fromAnders Halverson ’s websiteorAmazon .
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