who have all lost their fights with their biggest fish they’ve hooked here) but catching a native fish in the waters they evolved is something pretty cool.
Cutthroat are our native fish throughout the Rockies. They’re beautiful and incredibly diverse.

I’ve caught plenty of big trout of other species too. But if I were really looking for maximum tug, it wouldn’t be trout.

A lot of people go to fly fishing for the maximum exposure to and connection with nature. So finding native fish does that in a way other things don’t.

My other favorite fish of the last year is this tiny, streamborn, native Gila trout. Exceedingly rare to find a streamborn one and takes a lot of hiking.