The Golden Trout

- California's State Fish

It has been called the "Fish from Heaven." Small and beautiful, distinctive and spectacular, the typical golden trout with its vibrant colors evolved over thousands of years adapting to the high country meadows of the Kern Plateau.

Watching a golden trout can be pure delight. One moment it blends into the amber-hued stream bottom as a camoflaged shadow in the depths. The next instant it transforms onto gleaming gold and red turning and catching the sun -- a flash of pure beauty and joy!

Scientist aren't sure why these fish exhibit such remarkable colors. Perhaps it's a form of communication.

Golden trout are one of only a few species of fish native to the southern Sierra Nevada, originating in a small section of the Kern Plateau in the Golden Trout Wilderness.

The fisrt significant human contact with golden trout was probably made by small groups of Native American Indians. Other than a few creeks in the upper Kern River area where the golden trout lived, high-elevation waters in the southern Sierra Nevada remained fishless until the mid-1800's. At that time, prospectors, shepherds, loggers, and anglers exploring the Plateau fell under the spell of these beautiful trout and began transplanting them into lakes and streams outside of thier native range.