A Skyrim player came across a flying school of fish in a rare un-modded Anniversary Edition playthrough. In addition to the Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn expansion packs, the Anniversary Edition of Skyrim comes bundled with a set of high-quality, community-made content packs known as Creations. Among this extensive collection, there is a Creation that adds the art of Fishing to the Nord province, allowing the Dragonborn to hunt a wide variety of fish for use in Alchemy, Cooking, or even bounties.
Catching a fish in Skyrim can be done by interacting with one of 69 unique fishing spots spread across Skyrim. Under normal circumstances, these locations make up the majority of Skyrim's bodies of water, from ponds such as Evergreen Grove, to larger landmarks such as Lake Honrich or the Karth River. However, coming across a flying school of fish swimming in the clouds of Skyrim is not a normal circumstance by any measure, and one can't help but wonder what the cause of this phenomenon is.
The strange glitch was discovered by Cute_Musician_4690, who shared their gravity-defying fish with the official Skyrim community on Reddit. Many were eager to blame incompatible mods as the likely culprit, and though this would be correct in most cases, Cute_Musician_4690 clarified that they were playing regular Skyrim with its Anniversary Edition on PS4. Considering the incident occurred near the coastline of Skyrim, there may be an explanation for this bizarre deviation yet.
As tempting as it may be for Skyrim's stealth archer players to shoot down the fish with a bow, it's quite likely that they would remain floating above the ground, paying no heed to the frustrations of the Dragonborn trying to reach them from below. It's quite possible that they are exactly where they need to be regarding their fishing spot – except, of course, being on the correct height coordinate. Skyrim is a wide sandbox that hides a lot of depth underneath the surface, and having a messed-up coordinate for a school of fish in one's save-game isn't entirely out of question. Thankfully, the bug seems to be completely harmless, and if Skyrim players come across it on their own, there's no cause for alarm.
Though coming across flying fish in Skyrim may be amusing to some, there's a high likelihood that Bethesda's upcoming Starfield will have even stranger behavior in its fauna sold as a completely mundane thing. The game that seeks to rival Fallout and The Elder Scrolls has been described as "nasapunk" in the past, as exploration will take center stage in Starfield. If flying fish debut in the wondrous planets of Starfield, they will do so as a feature rather than a bug.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - Anniversary Edition is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Reddit