Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Trout Unlimited's work in this episode covers three projects: volunteer habitat monitoring on a Gila trout stream burned by the 2012 Whitewater-Baldy fire, an $18 million channel reconnecting the Colorado River around Windy Gap Reservoir, and a river restoration in Questa, New Mexico that turned into an economic plan for the town.
Three Trout Unlimited people appear: a New Mexico chapter president running volunteer Gila trout habitat monitoring, the organization's Colorado water project counsel, and its New Mexico water and habitat program director.
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Why did Gila trout nearly disappear?
Gila trout are native to the Gila River drainage, a Pacific-draining tributary of the Colorado River in southwestern New Mexico and a small part of Arizona. Early settlers and miners over-harvested them, then state agencies stocked rainbow trout that hybridized with Gila trout very effectively, while brown trout competed with and preyed on them, pushing Gila trout further into headwater streams. Hatchery attempts in the 1920s largely failed because Gila trout proved much harder to raise than rainbows, and by the time they were recognized scientifically as a distinct species in the 1950s, very few streams still held them.
What does endangered listing mean for Gila trout today?
Gila trout were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1973, which closed the remaining streams to fishing, and were downlisted in 2006 after populations expanded beyond the original set of streams. Five distinct lineages of Gila trout are now recognized, each with its own genetic profile, and the recovery goal is to have every lineage established in more than one stream so that a single wildfire cannot erase it. Wildfire, not drought, is the threat that repeatedly set the recovery back, forcing crews to net fish out of burned drainages and move them to other streams or into a hatchery.
What does volunteer habitat monitoring on Willow Creek measure?
Willow Creek, a Gila River tributary, lost its non-native rainbow and brown trout to the aftermath of the 2012 Whitewater-Baldy fire, which burned nearly 300,000 acres of the surrounding forest, and that disaster opened the door to restoring Gila trout there. The chapter built a volunteer habitat assessment run twice a year, in spring and fall, for three years, using deliberately simplified methods so the data stays reliable and repeatable across untrained volunteers. The monitoring showed critical pool habitat disappearing as post-fire watersheds shed sediment during larger, flashier flood events.
How big does a Gila trout get?
A trophy Gila trout is anything over 12 inches, and the chapter president has caught fish pushing 18 inches. Hatchery broodstock Gila trout reach about four pounds, and hatcheries now supply fish for recreational stocking, so a new record is a live possibility. Gila trout are golden-bronze with fine spots, and streams with good food produce far bigger fish than the small headwater habitat suggests.
What did Windy Gap Reservoir do to the Colorado River?
Windy Gap Reservoir sits directly in the Colorado River at the river's headwaters, in a basin where roughly 70 to 75 percent of the flow is already diverted across the Continental Divide to the Denver metro area and northern Colorado, mostly for municipal supply. A state wildlife agency study comparing conditions before and after the reservoir found about 38 percent of macroinvertebrate species lost, including the giant stonefly, and the native sculpin population downstream gone entirely. The trout fishery declined significantly over the same period.
What is the Colorado River Connectivity Channel?
The connectivity channel, also called the Windy Gap bypass, converts an on-channel reservoir into an off-channel one by building a new river channel around Windy Gap Reservoir, reconnecting the Colorado above and below it. The project carries an $18 million price tag, was roughly $2 million short of fully funded at the time of the interview from a mix of federal, state, water-provider and private money, and construction was hoped for in 2021. It came out of about eight years of conflict between Trout Unlimited, a county and water providers that ended in an agreement to fix the river rather than fight the diversions.
Does channel restoration actually produce more fish?
Upstream of Windy Gap Reservoir, a partnership restored roughly a mile of a Colorado River tributary by building a low-flow channel within the existing oversized channel, with riffles, pools and cooler holding water. Within weeks of completing the channel work, fish numbers were up about 300 percent, and while the figure settled back somewhat, the section still holds far more fish than before. The premise across all of these projects is that lower flows are permanent, so the channel is reshaped to work at the flows the river actually gets.
How did a river restoration become an economic plan for Questa?
Questa, New Mexico was a town of roughly 1,700 people built around a mine that employed about 300 and closed in 2014, the same period the village church partially collapsed. Two Trout Unlimited chapter presidents each put money toward restoring about two miles of the Red River, the state game and fish department tripled the contribution, and a mine-funded community trust added more. The restored river became an asset the village chose to monetize, and follow-on funding retrained former mine equipment operators to move boulders and install stream structures on restoration jobs.
Key takeaways
- Gila trout were listed as endangered in 1973 and downlisted in 2006; five genetic lineages are recognized, and recovery targets each lineage living in more than one stream.
- The 2012 Whitewater-Baldy fire burned nearly 300,000 acres and wiped out non-native trout in Willow Creek, which is what made Gila trout restoration there possible.
- Volunteer stream monitoring works when methods are simple enough to produce repeatable data - spring and fall assessments over three years showed pools filling with post-fire sediment.
- Beaver dam analogs plus willow planting are the next step on Willow Creek: willows stabilize banks and shade the water, and the structures mimic what beaver ponds used to do.
- Roughly 70 to 75 percent of the Colorado River's headwater flow is diverted over the Continental Divide, and about half of that water ends up on Front Range lawns - household water conservation is a direct river issue.
- A restored mile of tributary channel above Windy Gap produced roughly a 300 percent increase in fish within weeks, showing what channel work can do at reduced flows.
