September 2009
Trout in the Desert
by Craig Springer
Ambrosial light of morning breaks over the walls of Black Canyon, making pictures for our occupation. Illuminated is a land of stark contrasts this first light of day—dry friable dirt on the south-facing rocky hillsides, studded with gnarled alligator juniper and spare grasses. The slopes on the other side of the canyon with a northern aspect are wetter, forested with cinnamon-yellow ponderosa pine that smell of vanilla. The ground, though, is blackened by a recent forest fire. The ashen hulls of burnt deadfalls lie like frozen ghosts. Green supine fields below, face upward watching the passing moon. A thin riparian ribbon bisects the canyon bottom, snaking from wall to wall in a curling fashion as flowing water wants to do. Gila trout colored with a touch of lemon—like the light that peeks over the ridgeline—swim here.
I’m in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness with my wife and children, near the convergence of Catron, Grant and Sierra counties, in what seems like a place as remote as the moon. The gelid creek water comes off the Continental Divide in the Black Range flowing westward intending to go to the Sea of Cortez. But it will never make it. Instead, what doesn’t evaporate will irrigate chile fields in Virden, make cotton grow in Pima, or cook vegetables in a pan somewhere around Phoenix. But for now, in this canyon bottom this new water freshly off the high mountains courses around our calves. The grit of gravels in my shoes feels good. I have this morning a singular focus, and that is to catch a Gila trout—a species that swims nowhere else in the world, but in the headwater streams of the Gila River.
I pay out some line on my fly rod, and come to my knees where the creek comes to a high canyon wall. The creek is small, the water clear enough to see the bottom of a five-foot-deep pool. And these trout recognize a predator when they see one, so I hide. I have to inch forward, low to the ground, concealing myself as I can by willow sprigs.
A raft of Sonoran suckers is invisible, but for their shadowy forms; they swim casually on the bottom in a cobbled strait of stream. They seem oblivious to my being. That bodes well for me. The Gila trout that lie in the comfort of shaded water made by a mass of tree roots soaking near the throat of a riffle probably don’t know I’m here either. They wait there, facing upstream for the food they eat, aquatic bugs or those that fall in the water, to come to them.
The adrenalin squirts into my bloodstream with the possibilities. My senses heighten. With fur and feathers on a hook slightly smaller than my pinkie fingernail, my fly line unfurls in a sinuous curl. The imitation grasshopper comes to rest on the seam of current where riffle and pool intersect. The floating fly wafts onto the flowing water as it skates farther down into the pool. Then it happens. In a spot of time, all of eternity seems fixed into the moment. A Gila trout shows itself from the shaded water, and with a tilt and a dart, it smacks the grasshopper. This moment that a Gila trout rises to the fly is only temporary, ephemeral and passing, but passing moments become everlasting.
This moment of catching my first-ever Gila trout has a Zen-like quality. It’s a clarifying experience, as if it unfolds while I look on at myself from a distance. In a matter of seconds, I wrest from the deep pool a beautiful yellow trout flecked with pepper-spots over its back and upper flanks. Parr marks run the length of the fish, as does a faint rosy-pink band.
This Gila trout that I hold is a prize, but not for its size. This little fish, maybe 10-inches long, carries with it a lexis from the past, a language expressed in how it survives in such a harsh place. It’s a trout. And this is desert.
These trout that survive here now are left over from another time. Coiled in the spiraling DNA of this desert trout are provisions whereby it can make a living in spare water, warm water. They can survive periods in isolated pools with no flow, save for the cienegas and seeps that percolate through the cobbles underground. These trout possess the temperament in their genes to make a living in what nature hurls at them.
The Gila trout spawns in the spring when snow melt comes down and water temperatures go up to about 47 degrees, usually in April or May. First-time spawners are three-years-old and only five-inches long. Females may drop only 70 eggs. They may live four to six years and grow to a foot long in the wilds of these small streams, but a fish significantly bigger would be exquisitely rare.
Scientists reason that ancestral Gila trout ascended the Gila River from the Sea of Cortez a long time ago. They share the yellow skin of the Apache trout in Arizona, and the Mexican golden trout south of the border. The Gila trout is a New Mexican, native only to the Gila River basin. It belongs here, as nature intended; anything else is a construct of man.
The names we give to places and things, fish included, tell a story of the past. Geographer Donald Orth said that, “Place names are the language in which the nation’s autobiography is written.” The names on maps are vignettes of our experience and encounters with the land. The Gila region, and in fact, the Gila trout itself are no exception. The local lexicon speaks to a harsh existence: Deadman and Massacre canyons, Rainy Mesa, Raw Meat Creek, Hells Hole, Hard Scrabble Canyon, Loco Mountain.
This place where Gila trout live is rugged, the lay of the land formidable. Defiant Apache Indians held on here for so long, aided by the lay of the land. According to New Mexico scribe, Robert Julyan, in his book “The Place Names of New Mexico,” the word “Gila” itself relates to the lay of the land. Julyan says that the word “Gila” is an Apache Indian word corrupted in the Spanish language. The Apache word, “tsihl” or “dzil,” means mountain. It’s appropriate then, that this unique yellowish trout native to the mountain headwaters of the Gila bear the name of the same.
As unique and beautiful as this trout is, it’s not been known to science for very long. But folks have known about Gila trout for centuries. Beaver trapper, James Ohio Pattie, one of the first writers and speakers of English to traverse this remote place made mention of fish—and most likely Gila trout—in his personal narrative. Pattie and fellow trappers came through New Mexico in the early 1820s, passing through Santa Fe, and then southward and onto California.
He wrote of his 1824 experience at the confluence of the West and Middle forks of the Gila River near the site of the present-day visitor’s center, close to the famous Cliff Dwelling National Monument. “On the morning of 13th [December] we started early, and crossed the river Helay, here a beautiful clear stream about thirty yards in width, running over a rocky bottom and filled with fish. We found here a boiling spring so near the main stream, that the fish caught in one might be thrown into the other without leaving the spot where it was taken. In six minutes it would be thoroughly cooked.”
The boiling spring is still there, and still used, but for soaking hikers feet. The Gila trout retreated from the main-stream reaches of the Gila River to the headwaters streams, like Black Canyon. After settlement of the area, nonnative fishes were introduced and the native Gila trout couldn’t compete with them. Gila trout hybridized with nonnative rainbow trout, creating a mongrel fish population that was neither Gila nor rainbow. What was Gila trout habitat became overrun with other nonnative fish species, brook trout and brown trout.
The Gila trout wasn’t formally recognized by scientists as a unique fish species until 1950, 125 years after trapper Pattie cooked them in a hot spring. But conservationists early on in New Mexico’s history knew that the Gila trout was distinct, and the New Mexico Game and Fish Department attempted to culture them in the 1920s at a small hatchery deep in the Gila National Forest. Remaining pure Gila trout populations in five streams were closed to fishing for about 50 years. Only in 2008 after the fish’s range was significantly expanded, were they again available to legally catch on hook and line. They remain, however, one of the rarest trout in the world.
So, this 10-inch yellow trout wriggling in my hands, released back to its lair in this first light, is more than just a fish. All things spiritual rise. And a Gila trout rising to an imitation grasshopper is with certainty a spiritual matter. From near extinction to outwitting one with a fly rod, these opposites clarify one another; there is no redemption without sin, no light without darkness. New Mexico is endowed with many wonderful and inspiring natural features and the Gila trout is as cherished a blessing as any.
Gila trout is open to fishing in some streams through October 31 only. Others are open year-round. Some things you’ll need are a high-clearance vehicle, and a willingness to take off some boot tread. Even the most accessible wild Gila trout population is 25 miles off of a paved road.
For more information on planning your own trip, call Mike Brinton at the Whiskey Creek Dude Ranch at 602-684-7199 or the Gila Hot Springs Ranch at 575-563-9551. Visit the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish online, where you can get a Gila Trout Permit for free.
Something else to expect is fishing in small waters, in some cases so narrow you can straddle the streams, so leave your waders behind as you venture out to see another of New Mexico’s natural treasures.
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