Trout Fishing

The Rio Grande cutthroat trout wears its name on its throat — the slash of red beneath the gills that marks every cutthroat — and it carries another distinction: it is the southernmost cutthroat subspecies on earth, native only to the headwater streams of the Rio Grande, Canadian, and Pecos basins of New Mexico and southern Colorado. It is also New Mexico's state fish. And for most of the twentieth century, it was losing its home.

Long before trout became a Red River pastime, they were a Red River product. A hatchery has stood in the valley near Questa since 1941, and today the Red River State Fish Hatchery produces about 1.7 million rainbow trout a year — more than the state's four other hatcheries combined. It is the largest production hatchery in New Mexico.