I’m not one to brag about my fly-fishing expertise. My skill set is pretty basic, although I’m willing to bet I’m among the few California anglers to catch a palomino trout. That was many years ago, when I was a college student, and a pal from my dorm invited me to his family home in Pennsylvania for a weekend visit. Jack and I had talked about how much we loved to fish, so after the obligatory chat with his folks, where we lied about how well we were doing at school, he grabbed the car keys and a couple of fly rods, and off we went.
I no longer remember the name of the stream. It was near Jack’s place in Allentown and not very impressive, if you’re used to California rivers, only about ten feet wide and very shallow. I was still a novice fly fisher, but after a few flailing casts with a Pheasant Tail Nymph, I felt a powerful strike. The fish fought well and came to the net reluctantly, its gold color flashing in the sunshine. It didn’t look like any trout I’d ever seen before. Jack explained that it was a palomino, a hatchery-reared hybrid that’s also known as the banana trout because the gold shades to yellow in some fish.
The palomino came into being in West Virginia, but its origin story varies with the telling. In one version, a hatchery worker noticed a mutant gold-colored rainbow in 1955 that stood out from the crowd, and the biologists went to work. In a second version, the biologists deliberately set out to create the palomino, crossing a California golden trout with an ordinary rainbow. Whatever the case, the results were spectacular. The palomino has heterosis, or hybrid vigor, granting it superior strength, speed, and intelligence. Because of its color, it’s an easy target for anglers. That makes it especially spooky and often difficult to catch. My success in Pennsylvania was just beginner’s luck.
I wish I had a selfie of that fish, but cell phones weren’t around in those days. All I have is a distant memory of the palomino, but it made me wonder how other types of trout we’re missing out on in California. Quite a few, I discovered, including a couple I’d never heard of before. I imagined what it would be like to design a competition like the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Heritage Trout Challenge, where an angler must catch six different natives in their historic ranges. In my contest, the goal would be to hook and photograph six different trout not resident in California in six separate states or countries.
First on the list would be the bull trout. We used to have a wild population in the McCloud River, but the last was caught in 1975, and they’re extinct in California now, partly due to the habitat destroyed when Shasta Dam was built. (California Trout suggests that the golden trout, Kern River rainbow, and McCloud redband are all threatened with the same fate right now.) Bulls are actually char and often confused with Dolly Varden, named after a Dickens character who wore brightly colored dresses. They need cold, clean water and deep pools to survive. You might try for one in western Montana, Oregon, or Idaho, where a sign at Lake Pend Oreille warns, “Anglers, You’re in Bull Trout Country!” as if the trout might bite them. When you see their huge heads and monstrous jaws, you might believe that it’s true.
The bull trout is among the biggest in my challenge. The record specimen tipped the scales at 32 pounds, but the tiger trout, second on the list, is no slouch, either, with a top recorded weight 27.42 pounds. It was caught in Washington, where you might choose to head, but closer to California, the Nevada Department of Wildlife plants them in “22 mountain streams and reservoirs.” Tigers are a sterile hybrid bred from brown trout eggs and brook trout milt. In the photos I’ve seen, they don’t look at all like tigers. They lack any stripes, for starters, but they have an intriguing pattern of vermiculations, a fancy word for the tracks that worms make. They do live up to their name in terms of aggression, always eager to strike out at a fly.
To catch a splake trout, your third objective, a trip to Minnesota in August might be good idea. The Spruce Moths should be hatching at the northern lakes, and splakes can’t resist them. The splake represents another of man’s ceaseless attempts to improve on nature, developed as a hybrid “super trout” in Michigan in 1966. The idea was to create a fish that would grow faster, be fatter, and live longer than a lake trout or brook trout, its progenitors. The biologists achieved their goal, but I still worry that a splake may morph into the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I once watched a video of two guys in Canada drilling a hole in the ice to try for splake. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re even more bored than I was.
The next stop is New Mexico to fly fish for Gila trout, a native of the state. Gilas live in the remote high-desert country, where Geronimo and his warriors hid out from the US Army in the 1880s. Formerly an endangered species, the Gila was spared through the habitat restoration efforts of several activist groups. It’s still threatened, but there’s catch-and-release fishing for wild Gilas in four New Mexico streams now. If you go, be prepared for snakes and plenty of bushwhacking. The streams are small, shallow, and thick with brush, so the gorgeously colorful trout — like a New Mexican sunset, the locals say — seldom grow any bigger than 12 inches.
The Apache trout, number five on the list, is another success story, native to Arizona and the state fish. The White Mountain Apache tribe saved it from the bull trout’s fate, closing reservation waters in 1955, managing timber and grazing, wiping out predator species, and so on. Apache trout are closely related to Gila trout and also stick to the high country. They’re partial to mixed conifer forests and mountain meadows above six thousand feet. The fish tend to be even smaller and brighter than the Gila trout, but a few trophies up to six pounds have been caught.
My last trout is the most far-flung, requiring a plane ticket to Slovenia on the Adriatic, where you’ll fish the Soca River for genetically pure marble trout. The marble trout almost died out in the nineteenth century after breeding with resident browns, a near relative. The Slovenians identified the problem in time, found some pure marbles in isolated Soca tributaries, and repopulated the main river. Marbles aren’t to be taken lightly. They make bull trout look like infants, with an average stream size of 15 to 27 inches. Fortunate indeed is the Slovenian record holder who landed a 50-pounder.
I wonder if there’s a fly fisher anywhere California who’d take up my challenge. Probably not, I suspect. The expense of a trip to Slovenia would no doubt be a deal breaker. You’re better off sticking with the Heritage Trout Challenge. But even if I’ve just indulged in a fantasy, it was heartening to read about the restoration efforts that saved such native trout as the Gila and Apache. There’s really no reason why we can’t do the same here. Why risk losing the golden trout or the Kern River rainbow? If that should happen, we won’t be able to say that we weren’t warned.
