It’s hard to imagine a more scenic place to be devoured by mosquitoes than wildflower-speckled Meiss Meadow. There, some 15 miles from Lake Tahoe’s southern shores, the Truckee River meanders through the alpine valley, surrounded by snow-crusted peaks. It was the spring of 2024, and thanks to our 80-pound packs and our insistence on avoiding DEET, the mere four-mile hike up from a parking lot on State Route 88 was an ordeal for my two friends and me. We arrived, demoralized, and disgorged our heavy packs onto the grass filling the small clearing with wetsuits, weight belts, and cameras. The mission: to find native Lahontan cutthroat trout and, pending their cooperation, photograph them.

After a four-mile hike uphill, the trail opens up into a flat expanse of greenery. Not pictured: the bloodsuckers that punished us for keeping DEET out of the stream. Sage Ono

Until the 1800s, these fish were the apex predator in the Lahontan basin, a vast watershed stretching east from the Sierra Nevada. Gold Rush-era settlers told stories of 60-pound fish, but by the 1940s—after a century of logging, mining, and overfishing—Lahontan cutthroats (Oncorhynchus henshawi) had disappeared from most of their range. Most of the Lahontan trout in California today only exist because they were reintroduced from remnant populations. The population in this remote stretch was no exception, having been reintroduced in 1990.

With 60-pound giants on the mind, we surrendered to the mosquitoes, stripped down, geared up, and dipped into the water. To my layman’s eye, the river seemed vacant, bordering on sterile. The water cast a tannic bronze onto the ruddy gravel and loamy walls of the river. Then I noticed a single yearling fish hiding among some roots, and then another. A larger pair eyed me from an undercut bank. The Lahontans had fully reclaimed this stretch of river.

A young stream form lahontan cutthroat trout swims in the shallows of the upper truckee river. Sage Ono

Hours later, we left the meadow and its gluttonous mosquitoes behind. We trudged the four miles back to the car still in our wetsuits—bodies aching, but minds still swimming with excitement. We had glimpsed a riverscape as it might have been long before anyone called it the Truckee.

On Trout and Heritage

A reasonable person might wonder why I went to such lengths to see a fish. The answer was desperation. I am an underwater photographer—a marine underwater photographer. Given the choice, I’ll take calm seas, clear waters, and towering kelp forests over anything. But in the spring of 2024, Monterey Bay was plagued by severe marine algal blooms, and I turned inland to find fresher waters. 

That’s when I discovered the Heritage Trout Challenge, a California Department of Fish and Wildlife program encouraging anglers to explore the diverse waters of California. The challenge is to catch six of the eleven native trout in their historic watersheds. But I am a photographer, so with CDFW’s blessing, I set out to be the first person to complete the challenge by getting in with the fish rather than hooking them.

After months of crawling around rivers—I did it. Here’s my custom certificate, which details which trout I caught and where, along with the specialized camera and snorkel gear I used. I also got a hat! Sage Ono

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Before I ever put on a wetsuit or owned a camera, I was in love with fishing. Each summer, my family would visit my grandparents in Montana. I wouldn’t be two steps past the old cedar door before I was begging my grandfather to take me to the river. We’d cram into his ’88 Toyota pickup, wind through the mountains, and watch the Clark Fork river weave back and forth beneath the highway. It was an endearing sort of suffering, casting long past sunset until we heard the fish rising better than we saw them. Feet numb, legs bleeding from bushwhacking, falling asleep to blissful river dreams.

But as I grew older I began to feel guilty about fishing. What did it mean to love the sport but regret the harm? Over the past 200 years, the rivers and lakes of this country have been transformed, and California is no exception. To water our crops, we constructed dams and diversions cutting off miles of habitat. We introduced “desirable” fish like brook trout and largemouth bass that ate their way through native fish populations. With each isolated decision, California’s waterways and ecosystems evolved into the modern tapestry we see today. River by river. Fish by fish.

In the Heritage Trout Challenge, I saw a chance to fish without fishing. I expected to relive the adventures of my youth as I searched California’s idyllic backcountry streams for gorgeous fish. Instead, over the course of 4,000 miles, I found a landscape shaped by human disturbance, yet filled with surprising abundance. The journey changed my relationship with wilderness.

California Gold Rush

After my humbling hike to the Lahontan cutthroats, I was determined to find the next fish as near to a road as possible. I was aiming for a twofer in the southern Sierras: the Kern River rainbow (Oncorhynchus mykiss gilberti) and the California golden trout (Oncorhynchus aguabonita). So in July 2024, I found myself sharing the banks of the Kern River with a rambunctious assemblage of river rafters, off-roaders, and day-drinkers, who had taken to the mountains to cool off during the hottest month in California history.

To find a pure Kern River rainbow, I needed to leave the mainstem behind and search the tributaries that weren’t worth stocking with hatchery rainbow trout. Kern River rainbows are thought to be an ancient hybrid between coastal rainbow trout and Little Kern golden trout, but their greatest threat today is further hybridization. Whatever natural population existed before 1914—when stocking began—has been diluted by hatchery fish for over a century. At this rate, they may not last until the end of the century as their distinct genetics are increasingly muddled. 

I spent my first half-day checking pull-offs and U.S. Forest Service roads in sweltering chaparral before I found a stream deep enough to hold a fish. The location was, let’s say, unpretentious. Running past a campfire ring, a scattering of beer cans, and a half-constructed camp toilet, was a small gulch with a creek. Hardly an oasis, but still a haven for the few pure fish it supported.

When it came to the golden trout, I wanted more than the bare minimum proof-of-life shot. The official state freshwater fish—likely to go extinct in my lifetime—deserved better. The image I wanted to create was something that evoked the gold and crimson fish as it should be remembered: wild.

Yet the waters I was searching could hardly be described as such. At the first stream, I met a pair of stray rainbow trout out of their range and a pair of dirt bikers who clearly thought I was out of my mind. My second attempt yielded a few skittish golden shimmers, but the peripheral cow-pats discouraged me from spending too much time in the water. I was finally rewarded at my third location with a beautiful 10-inch California golden trout … beneath a not-quite-as-beautiful grey concrete bridge.

A bridge in the southern Sierra marks a pool containing several larger California golden trout. Sage Ono

An adult california golden trout swims beneath a bridge over Fish Creek. Sage Ono

Seeking “wilderness,” I had found a landscape crisscrossed with off-roading trails, scorched by a warming planet, and festooned with cow patties. I spent my drive home wondering how it might have looked millennia ago. But fish, so far as I know, don’t ponder their heritage the way a human does. Unburdened by loss, they just keep swimming in the river as they always have.

Blue Lines

A blue line on a map leaves out a lot about a river. It could be a pristine creek—or it could be a tricklet, arroyo, or stagnant pool. In my search for the McCloud River redband (Oncorhynchus mykiss calisulat), a fish whose habitat range has been reduced to just four small isolated streams, I drove through miles checkered with clearcuts, and found only one location where the late summer heat hadn’t left the water too shallow to snorkel.

The remnants of a recently clear-cut section of forest lay by the side of the road near Mount Shasta. Clear-cutting can increase stream temperatures by up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, which can have disastrous impacts on trout survival. Sage Ono

When I was researching potential streams to photograph McCloud River Redband trout, Ash Creek’s seemed like the perfect blue line on the map—accessible, isolated, and in the right range. In reality, the stream is inundated with sediment, thanks to Mount Shasta’s volcanic history. Sage Ono

I returned to photograph McCloud River redband trout in spring 2025 and was surprised by how much more water there was earlier in the year. The fish were far more active in the chilly 42-degree water, but I was able to get a few closeups. Sage Ono

Even when there was a wealth of information about a river, the reality beneath the surface was a mystery. The Smith River—California’s wildest and last undammed river—shocked me with its eerie blue emptiness. Apart from a few coastal cutthroats, I saw little but bare river stone. I later learned from a Trout Unlimited biologist that this emptiness is how the river should look, free from the unnatural abundance of invasive species and runoff. 

A large coastal cutthroat trout rests in the Smith River where Mill creek enters the main stem. Sage Ono

Home Waters

In my gallivanting across the state, I had neglected the one river closest to me. A river I had long thought domesticated by wineries and vacation homes: the Carmel. This watershed is home to a specific population of seagoing coastal rainbow trout called south-central steelhead. Although rainbow trout have been exported to every continent except Antarctica, they aren’t thriving across their native range.

Eighty years ago, the Carmel boasted an 8,000-fish run, drawing anglers in droves during the winter months and bringing business to the community. Today, 300 fish is a banner year. 

Sage Ono

If not for the Carmel River Steelhead Association (CRSA), the fish would likely have disappeared long ago. Back in the 1970s, a group of anglers founded the association after they noticed their river was changing. The fish didn’t strike as readily as they had decades earlier. The river didn’t chill the anglers’ legs or cover their knees as it once did. The river began to dry in sections that had once run year-round. They noticed all this because they spent so much time on the water.

That was the kind of connection I sought when I took on the Heritage Trout Challenge—I wanted to know the waters and fish of my state. I have seen them now, at least. And while I can’t say that I understand them as deeply as an angler knows every bend in her local stream, I know that their wildness persists even when their wilderness is long gone.

For the two past summers since I began the Heritage Trout Challenge, I’ve been volunteering with CRSA, rescuing trapped steelhead juveniles from drying tributaries and releasing them into the main stem of the Carmel River. In my days on the water, I have come to think of this river as my river, and these fish as my fish. It’s hard to say when, if ever again, the Carmel River will see steelhead returning in their historical numbers. But as long as there are fish that remember the way to their home waters, and people who are working to restore the river, that day may yet come.