Arizona

Arizona is the most surprising trout state in the American West — a desert landscape that hides exceptional cold-water fisheries in its canyon depths and mountain highlands. The Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam at Lee's Ferry is the state's most famous fishery and one of the most productive tailwaters in North America, a cathedral of red sandstone walls and crystal-clear 47-degree water teeming with massive rainbow trout on year-round midge emergences. This is big-fish country: five-pound rainbows are common, ten-pound fish are caught regularly, and the occasional specimen approaches twenty pounds.

The White Mountains of eastern Arizona offer a completely different trout experience at elevations between 7,000 and 11,000 feet. The White Mountain Apache Tribe manages some of the most carefully maintained trout fisheries in the Southwest on their reservation lands — stocked heavily with trophy-sized fish and accessible only through tribal permits. The adjacent Arizona Game and Fish–managed waters of the Black River and Little Colorado headwaters hold native Apache trout, a species of conservation significance found naturally in only a small number of streams worldwide. The Salt River below Roosevelt Dam and the Verde River below Horseshoe Dam provide additional tailwater trout fishing within reach of Phoenix.