Yellowstone cutthroat were once widely distributed throughout the Yellowstone River system, including portions of northwestern Wyoming, southeastern Idaho, southern Montana, plus northern Nevada and Utah.
They now occupy only 10 percent of this historic range.
Yellowstone cutthroat trout were the nation’s first fish species to be identified as cutthroat trout – the first of now 14 recognized subspecies to be described as “cutthroat” because of their orange to crimson slashes underneath the jaw.
I caught one in the big horn mountains this summer