The Cutthroat's Last Rocky Mountain Redoubt

It's still the last best place in America, but the pressure is on around Yellowstone National Park has been hard on this disappearing species.

Photos by
Don Jordan

This pair of cutthroat took a Pale Morning Dun Parachute, No. 14.  Although few anglers keep these fish these days, the cutthroat is among the best eating of all the trout.  It is excellent fried or grilled, but there is nothing better than a smoked cutthroat with drawn butter on the side.

Cash Currant, right, of Silver Gate, Mont., took this nice cutthroat from the Yellowstone River below Immigrant in September, 1998, before whirling disease was documented in trout living in Yellowstone Lake, a prime spawning ground for cutthroat and one of their last redoubts in the Rocky Mountains.