Trout Species of New Mexico

The state's trout fisheries are a study in contrasts. The San Juan below Navajo Dam is one of the most productive tailwaters in the country — fertile, cold, and packed with browns and rainbows that run 16 to 22 inches. Two hundred miles south, the Gila Wilderness holds a federally threatened native trout in tiny brushy streams that most fly anglers never reach. In between, in the Sangre de Cristos and the Pecos high country, native Rio Grande Cutthroat are recovering on stream after stream as the state walls off their drainages from non-native invaders.

For a fly angler this means three things: your spot selection has conservation consequences, the species mix changes more than the weather between elevations, and the rules vary water by water. A Gila Trout permit is free but mandatory. The San Juan has a slot limit. The Pecos Wilderness has fish that almost no one outside northern New Mexico knows exist. Pay attention to which fish you're holding before you decide what to do with it.

Native — Rio Grande drainage; New Mexico's state fish

The flagship. Rio Grande Cutthroat is the state fish of New Mexico and the southernmost subspecies of native Cutthroat in North America. Once distributed across the entire upper Rio Grande and Pecos watersheds, today it survives in roughly a tenth of its historical range — high tributaries and isolated headwater reaches where biologists have either kept or restored it. Catch one and you are holding a fish that exists almost entirely because New Mexico Department of Game and Fish chose to keep fighting for it.

Native — Gila River drainage; one of the rarest trout in North America

Gila Trout are the desert Southwest's improbable native — a trout species that evolved in the warm, rugged drainages of the Gila and San Francisco rivers in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. They were federally listed as endangered in 1973, recovered to "threatened" in 2006, and are now the centerpiece of one of the most ambitious native fish restoration programs in the country. A handful of streams in the Gila Wilderness are open to fly anglers, and the experience is unlike anything else in Western fly fishing.

Non-native — workhorse of New Mexico tailwaters

Brown trout were introduced from Europe more than a century ago and are the dominant trout in most of New Mexico's blue-ribbon tailwaters. The San Juan below Navajo Dam, the Rio Chama below Abiquiu Dam, and the lower Pecos all hold strong brown populations, and the San Juan in particular grows them to genuine trophy size — 20-inch fish are not a once-a-season event there, they're a routine part of a good day.

Stocked statewide, with strong wild populations on the San Juan and Jemez

Rainbows are present in nearly every fishable New Mexico river, mostly through NMDGF stocking programs that supplement angling pressure. The exceptions are meaningful: the San Juan's Quality Waters section holds an exceptional self-sustaining wild rainbow population, and the Jemez drainage holds wild rainbows in several tributaries. Stocked fish dominate most other waters.

Non-native — high elevation in the Pecos and Sangre de Cristos

Brook trout are native to the eastern United States and were stocked across the Mountain West a century ago. In New Mexico they've taken firm hold in the high-elevation streams and lakes of the Pecos Wilderness and the Sangre de Cristo range, where they're often the dominant species. They're beautiful, they're aggressive, and they're a problem where they overlap with native Rio Grande Cutthroat — see the conservation note below.

Both of New Mexico's native trout face the same fundamental pressure: hybridization with non-native species. Rio Grande Cutthroat hybridize with stocked rainbows wherever the two share water, producing "cuttbows" that gradually erase the native genetics. They also lose ground to brook trout in headwater streams — the high country was the last refuge, and brookies followed them there. Gila Trout face hybridization with rainbows in any water the two share, which is why most of the open permit waters are isolated above barriers.

New Mexico's trout fisheries punch far above their weight. You can drift the San Juan for trophy browns one weekend, hike into Pecos Wilderness for native Rio Grande Cutthroat the next, and spend a long weekend in the Gila Wilderness chasing a federally threatened species that exists almost nowhere else on Earth. The state has done a lot to keep its native trout around. Recognize them when they come to hand, treat them carefully, and they'll still be here for the next angler who walks up the canyon.