Bringing Home the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout

By Mike Caltagirone

Forty miles northeast of the world’s “Biggest Little City”, beyond the loose slots and geriatric gentrification, lies Pyramid Lake: 188 square miles of dusty Nevada salt lick, fed and filled by turbid Sierra mountain runoff. Fisherman wade these alkaline shoals, casting long lines against strange rock horizons, and baiting mammoth ghosts of the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout. 

During the mid-19^th century, western Nevada and northern California were home to the 1850’s version of the dot-com boom.  Gold and silver mines throughout the area were drawing people from all over the world with dreams of striking it rich.  In 1859, the year after the discovery of the Comstock Lode, over 17,000 people flooded northwest Nevada in search of their fortune.   These new people were hungry and they needed food in an area that was not prepared for instant agricultural production.  They naturally turned to the inherent gifts of the region, specifically the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout of Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake.  

While the documented record for Lahontan Cutthroat Trout is a 41 pound pig caught in Pyramid Lake, photographs from the late 1800’s regularly show fish that are likely up to 60 pounds. These massive fish were harvested in very high numbers to feed the thousands of miners and settlers that filled the area.  During the peak years, some estimates say that up to one million pounds of fish per year were taken from Pyramid and Walker lakes and shipped throughout the west.  

The real damage to the species did not occur until the 1940’s however.  At the turn of the century, agriculture endeavors in the area had spread far and wide, and the need for water was fierce.  Dams were built on the Truckee and Walker rivers to divert flow into irrigation canals and on to needy farmers and ranchers.  Unfortunately, these diversion dams also interrupted the historical spawning runs of the local cutthroat.  Derby Dam on the lower Truckee blocked spawning runs from Pyramid Lake in 1905.  And while these dams were a serious blow to the viability of these LCT populations, poor design and management eventually sealed the fate of these populations.  

The mediocre fish ladder that went along with Derby Dam was destroyed in a flood in 1907 but was never adequately replaced.  This effectively reduced the useable river length by two thirds for the spawning fish. Then in the early 1940’s, water diversion was mishandled leaving fish isolated and stranded on dry spawning beds that were baking in the Nevada sun.  By 1943 the Pyramid Lake strain of giant Lahontan Cutthroat trout which had dominated the ecosystem for centuries if not millennia, was gone.   

However, the reputation of these spectacular fish lived on and in the mid 1950s it became a goal of the fisheries program at the Nevada Department of Wildlife to reintroduce the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout back into its native range.   But there are many hurdles to a successful reintroduction program.  

In 1956 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was authorized to begin raising LCT for reintroduction.  The Lahontan National Fish Hatchery Complex, comprised of the Marble Bluff Fish Facility and the Lahontan National Fish Hatchery, was initiated for the purpose of raising LCT and other endangered native fish in the area.  The initial LCT strain used at the hatchery was the Independence Lake strain.  This strain, while not a genetic match to the Pyramid Lake strain, was thought to be as close to the original Pyramid Lake strain as was likely to be found.  

Then in the 1970’s Lahontan Cutthroat Trout were found in a small stream near Pilot Peak in western Utah, far outside the LCT native range.  It is not known who transferred these fish or what the purpose was, but later genetic comparison indicated that the Pilot Peak strain were direct descendants of the original Pyramid Lake strain of Cutthroat Trout.  Sample fish of this wild strain were captured and used to create a broodstock at the Lahontan National Fish Hatchery.  A decade of research and monitoring resulted in an active breeding population at the hatchery with special focus on maintaining genetic diversity. This Pilot Peak strain of LCT is now integral to the reintroduction and planting programs maintained by the U.S. F&W service. 

While the Pilot Peak strain of LCT are a robust fish, growing over half an inch per month in the hatchery, the LCT are not aggressive competitors in their natural environment.  Over the course of the decades following the loss of the LCT,

the Truckee and Walker rivers, along with most of the rivers in the western U.S., were planted with Rainbow and German Brown trout.  These visitors thrived both naturally and were repeatedly planted throughout the former range of the LCT.  

With the establishment of the LNFH and the LCT broodstock there, Lahontan Cutthroats were also planted throughout the same region. It was soon noticed, however, that the LCT were not exactly thriving as expected.  While originally LCT were the apex predator in their environment, the Brown and Rainbow trout were now out-competing them on their home field.  For as big as they used to get and as dominant as they used to be, the LCT just weren’t aggressive enough, territorial enough or assertive enough to compete against these new fish on the block.   

The discovery that the planted LCT were not competitive meant that reintroduction of the species would not be a simple matter of planting them in their ancestral water and letting them thrive.  Existing populations currently occupying the environment would have to be eradicated to provide a clean foundation on which the LCT populations could be built.  This would mean a considerable impact on the river environment and a prolonged period of stabilization before the cutthroat trout could be reintroduced.  Overall, the process would have to be significantly more complex and involved due to the general “wimpiness” of the native fish.   

Over the last 15 years, the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has established numerous independent populations of LCT in rural northern Nevada.  This past August, fisheries’ biologists for NDOW and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife began eradication efforts on McDermitt Creek along the NV/OR border.  Once cleared and planted, this creek will help create a meta-population of LCT in this drainage, allowing several independent and isolated populations to intermingle and breed and helping to maintain genetic diversity in the species. 

There are intense and complex programs currently working toward re-establishing the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout.  In addition to the NDOW/Oregon Department of Wildlife meta-population program in the McDermitt Creek drainage, there is The Nature Conservancy project to protect and support the self-sustaining LCT population in Independence Lake north of Truckee California and the Nevada Department of Wildlife is continuing to study the managed populations of Pilot Peak LCT in two lakes in northwest Nevada.  

These three main efforts are the three prongs of a successful conservation effort: Preserve, Restore and Reconnect.  These projects, directed by dedicated agencies, supported by sound science and organized with specific long-term goals will hopefully result in a point when completely self sustaining populations of LCT will regularly produce photo-ops with the type of memorable fish that are only now seen in history books and postcards.

Mike Caltagirone is the president of the Sagebrush Chapter of Trout Unlimited, the organization’s northern Nevada affiliate. To learn more about the Sagebrush Chapter, or to get involved, please email Mike at mcaltagirone@sagebrushtu.org