Fingerling-sized fish take quite a journey to stock remote Wyoming backcountry lakes, riding in specially-designed holding tanks slung under helicopters before being dumped into the water.
In the pre-dawn darkness on Tuesday, the process started on the ground. A line of Wyoming Game and Fish Department vehicles rumbled into the Dubois Municipal Airport and parked next to a Robinson R66 helicopter.
A cluster of eight cylinder-shaped fish tanks was also waiting there, attached to the helicopter with cables and electrical cords.
As coyotes greeted the coming day with yammering from a nearby hillside, Game and Fish personnel went about preparing little golden trout, rainbow trout, Yellowstone cutthroat trout and splake (brown trout-lake trout hybrids) for their airborne journey.
Shortly after dawn, pilot Emmett Webb and helicopter mechanic Brice Miller arrived. They work for the Garland, Utah-based Rugged Mountain Aviation commercial helicopter service. The company has a contract with Game and Fish to fly the fingerlings into high country lakes.
Kaitlyn Stern, fish culture technician with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, dumps fingerling-sized fish into a specially designed holding tank early Tuesday at the Dubois Regional Airport. The fish were flown via helicopter to stock backcountry lakes. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Fish plunge from a specially designed holding tank slung under a helicopter and into a backcountry lake, as part of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s fish stocking program. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Pilot Emmett Webb of Rugged Mountain Aviation commercial helicopter services performs a pre-flight inspection on a Robinson R66 helicopter early Tuesday at the Dubois Municipal Airport. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Tim Franke, statewide fish spawning technician with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, loads fingerling-sized fish into a bucket early Tuesday at the Dubois Municipal Airport. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Pilot Emmett Webb of Rugged Mountain Aviation commercial helicopter services prepares to fire up a Robinson R66 helicopter at the Dubois Municipal Airport early Tuesday. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Kris Holmes, the statewide spawning coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, prepares a cluster of cylinder-shaped fish tanks just as dawn breaks Tuesday at the Dubois Municipal Airport. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily) 
Wyoming Game and Fish personnel meet with a crew from Rugged Mountain Aviation commercial helicopter services early Tuesday at the Dubois Municipal Airport. (Mark Heinz, Cowboy State Daily)
Scoop And Dump
The preparation process was straightforward. As Webb and Miller went about a pre-flight inspection of the helicopter, Game and Fish personnel got busy preparing the fish to fly.
Tim Franke, statewide spawning technician, used a large net to scoop the fish from a huge, trailer-mounted holding tank with numerous compartments, separating the fish by species.
The fingerlings came from Game and Fish hatcheries.
He dumped the fingerlings into red buckets, which fish culture technicians Evie Dorch and Kaitlyn Stern carried over to the flight tank cluster.
After announcing the species in each bucket to statewide spawning coordinator Kris Holmes, they dumped the fish into tanks in the cluster.
Each cylinder holds 10 to 25 pounds of fish, along with five to eight gallons of water and ice.
The ice lowers the fingerlings’ metabolisms, helping them to survive the flight, Game and Fish Lander regional fisheries supervisor Joe Deromedi told Cowboy State Daily.
Flying Fish
Helicopter stocking is an efficient way to get fish into high-altitude lakes, Holmes told Cowboy State Daily. That in turn gives the public opportunity to fish those lakes.
Not all backcountry lakes are stocked, some have thriving native populations, according to Game and Fish.
For those that must be stocked, flying the fish in is much faster, and easier on the fish, than hauling them in on horseback, according to the agency.
The helicopter stocking is part of a coordinated effort between Game and Fish and the U.S. Forest Service.
The plan is to stock 16 lakes with roughly 40,000 fingerling-sized fish this summer. It will take them at least two years to grow to catchable size, according to Game and Fish.
Fast, Powerful And With Air Conditioning
The R66 helicopter looks surprisingly small, but it gets the job done, Webb told Cowboy State Daily.
“I love this thing. It’s fast, it’s powerful and it has air conditioning,” he said.
Once airborne with its payload of fish, the helicopter cruises at about 60 knots (roughly 70 miles per hour), he said.
The helicopter takes multiple flights each day, with each flight lasting 15 to 50 minutes, depending on the distance, Webb said.
On Tuesday morning, he was flying solo. On the seat next to him was a box with numerous toggle switches. Each switch activates the bottom hatch on one of the cylinders, opening the hatch and dumping the fish into the water.
That might sound traumatic for the fish, but it doesn’t hurt them, according to Game and Fish.
The fish are dropped from a height of 10 feet or less, and the water in the cylinders cushions their fall into the lake, according to the agency.
Takeoff
After all the fish were loaded into the cylinders, everybody except Holmes got clear of the helicopter as Webb fired up the engine.
Holmes stayed behind, to stabilize the cluster tank and make sure that the cords didn’t get tangled during takeoff.
The morning was virtually windless, but the rotor wash created a powerful gust as Webb accelerated the engine.
Finally, the helicopter lifted off, and Holmes flawlessly guided the lines into place.
From the ground, the steady thumping of the helicopter’s rotors gradually faded as the helicopter flew away into the ever-brightening morning.
There wasn’t much time for chitchat as everybody headed for their respective vehicles, preparing to drive to the next spot and start the process all over again.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
