I recently triumphantly returned from California with four new additions to my list of Western Native Trout Challenge (WNTC) fish: California Golden Trout, Little Kern Golden Trout, Kern River Rainbow Trout, and Lahontan Cutthroat Trout. I fished with my life coach and aesthetician (we’ll call him Viator to continue with the snooty theme and his student role), and he also managed to hook, land, and photograph these fish. I’ll have a lot more to say about the WNTC in later posts.

I should hasten to add that Viator and I had already caught each of these fish types/taxa long ago when we were actively engaged in participating in the California Heritage Trout Challenge. We first caught the three upper Kern River fish (the CGT, LKGT, and KRRT) in 2007, when we were a fair amount younger and the LCT was one of our first achievements in 2000. It was slick to go back and catch these fish again (half in new waters), but our primary motivation was that the WNTC does not “grandfather” fish caught before its inception in May 2019.

We did some hiking to get to these fish, had some adventures of a moderate intensity, and enjoyed some camping.