Flying Fish?

Dora~Jean · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 2:09 am Post subject: Flying Fish?

Can't say I caught this one, but rather it made quite a 'landing' on the Catalina flying fish tour boat we were on last Friday evening. It flew about 100 feet before turning towards the 40 million candlepower light then right past the tour guide! Quite spectacular, never seen one up close before. Quite beautiful, very big eyes, kind of like a mackerel with wings.

The tour guide said they have two defense mechanisms, one that they can escape the water and fly away from predators (the rumble of the tour boat engines was the predator that night) and secondly they can release their horrible smelling mucas membrane as a last ditch effort to avoid being eaten -- which it did. Unfortunately, that also destroys their immunity from water-borne disease, therefore, they kept this fish for displaying afterwards since it would die anyway.

katkt · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 1:50 pm Post subject:

In the book Kon Tiki, whoever was making breakfast on the raft would make a tour of the deck, and collect the ones that ended up on the raft during the night.
I've never seen one up close.

B~C · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject:

I've been fly fishing but I ain't ever seen no flying fishing, sure an odd looking thing...I had a cousin that used to do a kind of smelly mucas thing

CatyMae n Steve · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:04 pm Post subject:

Ken!

You ever blown pretzel up your nose reading posts on here?
Laughing

B~C · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:33 pm Post subject:

damn pretzels

Captains Cat · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:50 pm Post subject:

That's a good size fish. I'm glad Halibut don't fly!! Shocked

Charlie