Скачать или смотреть Catching one of America's Rarest Trout out of a PUDDLE? (Fly Fishing for Gila Trout Pt 1)

One of America’s rarest trout is living in a puddle right now. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. New Mexico’s Gila trout is native only to the Gila River and has been listed as a threatened species on the endangered species list for several decades now. Recently I was lucky enough to be able to chase them in their native range with my brother Andrew and my buddy Micah, and what we found even surprised us. Welcome back to another video.

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.

That’s actually some insane foreshadowing from Andrew, I swear he’s the luckiest fisherman I know. But I think showing these failures is important when talking about fishing for any native trout, because it’s not easy. We spent around 5 hours hiking in, fishing, and hiking out of that canyon and got nothing out of it as far as fishing goes. Now any normal people would cut their losses and take a nap and set up camp, but we’re insane. So we decided a second hike that was even longer than the first sounded like a good idea. So off we went, hiking into our second desert canyon of the day looking for one of America’s rarest trout.

So we hiked all of the way down into that canyon to see… nearly zero water. Which shocked us considering we knew this creek had to have Gila Trout in it based on our research. Luckily what little water it did have was cold and clean, so we decided to give it a go… and to our surprise Andrew caught a Gila Trout in the first hole of the day.. so we started fish seriously and realized the amount of Gila Trout in this creek… or should I say series of puddles… was insane.

This was some of the most odd fishing I had ever done. I mean the fish were sitting in every hole in the creek by the dozens, some of the holes had running water between them and others were literally puddles that were totally disconnected from running water. We kind of figured that there wouldn’t be any fish over 10 inches just because how could there be? There wasn’t enough water to support anything that large. But remember how I said Andrew is the luckiest fisherman I know? Well of course he would be the one to randomly hook into a certified freak of a puddle trout, and I would be the one diving over a bank and into a down tree to net it.

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.
Overall I’d say it was a successful day. The hike out about killed us though… but that was a small price to pay for all of us catching our first gila trout. For those of you worried about one of America’s rarest trout living in puddles and thinking “how are they going to survive the summer?” I can shed a little light on that. This year these mountains got almost no snow pack, so what little snow they did get is long gone. BUT that area of New Mexico experiences a monsoon season, which usually runs from July through august. So low water this time of year isn’t all that uncommon, and the fish are used to surviving in it. They’ve done so for tens of thousands of years and are adapted to it pretty well. Having said that if I could make this trip over again I’d probably go a different time of year, just for you guys interested in making the journey. Anyways I’ll catch you on the next video, where we chase the gila trout once again but in a slightly different creek with a lot more water.

#troutfishing #fishing #outdoors #flyfishing #nature #trout #sports