In this video I spent 6 days fishing for some of America's rarest trout. These include the Apache Trout, the Gila Trout, and the Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout. I hope you enjoy!
As with most of the rare native trout the toughest part of catching one is finding one. There’s a lot of brutal hiking in some steep terrain through burns and steep rock faces. Unfortunately for us, the first creek we fished we didn’t see anything for several hundred yards. So although I’d argue that stupid hard difficult walk wasn’t for nothing, it surely wasn’t so we could Catch a Gila Trout.
So yeah, Andrew perfectly predicted the fact that he’d catch a 12 inch gila trout, made even more impressive by the fact it was caught out of a puddle underneath a log jam. This was definitely one of those days where the spot you’re catching the fish out of is probably more impressive than the fish themselves. But for them to even be surviving, and even thriving in water like this is incredible.
And that’s how we ended the apache trout portion of our trip, by making one of the rarest trout species in the world jump out of the water for my fly. But the two days we spent chasing these fish was incredible and came together to make a really cool story. We started out the trip dodging wild fires and being forced to fish water I really didn’t want to fish, and ended up running into a biologist after 2 days of fishing that literally saved our trip. If it weren’t for him we’d probably still be confused as to where to catch an apache trout. But as happy as we were with our experience in Arizona it was time to switch gears and head back to New Mexico for the famous Gila Trout.
So we have to introduce a new character into this video which is my brother Andrew. He really wanted to catch a gila trout so he flew in and met us for this portion of the trip. Also, Remember how I mentioned that this time of year can be one of the driest times of year for this area and that it affected the trip multiple times? Well day 4 is one of those days that was most impacted, because what we found down in one of these secluded canyons is still one of the most mind blowing things I’ve ever seen in trout country.
It’s kind of crazy that these fish have adapted to living in such a tough environment. Unfortunately as the climate changes these fish experience water like this more and more. This time of year during a good winter would have flowing water, but the worse the winters become the less and less water the dessert southwest has in the spring. Luckily this area does experience a monsoon season in July and august, so theoretically these fish won’t have to survive in this water for long before they get some more wiggle room. The crazy part is this stream isn’t even catch and release, so we could have legit kept some of these gila trout to eat if we had wanted to. Of course we had no intention of doing so, but that just shows how healthy this population of trout is, surviving and even thriving in trickles of water in the middle of the wilderness.
For the final day of fishing on our desert southwest adventure we went through a few options in our head. The first was to go back and catch apache trout at the stream we had fished on day 3 and explore it more. The second was to explore a different portion of the last gila trout stream we had fished the day prior. The third and final option was to go back up a little further north and fish for the rio grande cutthroat again. And if I’m being honest chasing gila trout was the last thing we wanted to do after dealing with all of the people on day 5 and the low water on day 4. Apache trout was more appealing because Andrew hadn’t caught one before and we knew a place we could surely catch them, but it was the opposite direction of the airport we already had flights for. So it seemed like our best option was to chase the rio grande cutthroat again. Not only because I thought it would be cool to end the trip where it began, but because we knew the water was perfect and the fish were going to be super easy to catch, both of which had been at a premium on out trip into the desert. And genuinely this day of fishing was probably some of the best small creek cutthroat trout fishing I’ve ever had.
After Andrew left micah and I went to another creek and didn’t really catch much. But that’s okay, because we had an incredible trip to the desert southwest. We caught some of America’s coolest trout species, got to spend time in the mountains, and had enough cool adventures to choke a horse. If you ever get the chance to visit these areas and fish for these ancient trout then you definitely should, it’s worth the time and effort. Thanks for watching.
