Video S4 - Angling for Restored Native Cutthroat Trout

Video S4. Yellowstone cutthroat trout recovery results in large adults returning to tributaries of the upper Yellowstone River to spawn. Sustained gillnetting suppression of invasive lake trout is allowing for a recovery of native Yellowstone cutthroat trout. Although abundances remain below target levels, the relative weights (condition) of cutthroat trout have increased, large individuals (400+ mm) are more prevalent, and individual weights have more than doubled over the past four decades. Cutthroat trout from Yellowstone Lake make long-distance (> 40 km) spawning migrations upstream from Yellowstone National Park and into the remote headwaters of the upper Yellowstone River in the Bridger-Teton Wilderness, Wyoming, USA. Here, Liz Storer, Wyoming Storer Foundation and Jason Burckhardt, Wyoming Game and Fish Department are fly-fishing for the migratory cutthroat trout in Atlantic Creek during early July, 2019. The cutthroat trout transport lake-derived nutrients into these remote headwaters in U.S. Forest Service lands, highlighting the importance of large, unfragmented, highly protected watersheds such as those of Greater Yellowstone. Partnerships with the Storer Foundation, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and numerous others developed over the past 25 years were the driving force behind the initial recovery of cutthroat trout and restoration of this ecosystem.