Colorado

Headwaters country. Gold Medal water and wild trout above 7,000 feet.

Colorado is the headwaters of the American Southwest. The Colorado, the Rio Grande, the Arkansas, the Platte, and the San Juan all rise here, and the cold high-country water they produce is what makes trout fishing possible across half the continent.

The state's Gold Medal Waters program — a Colorado Parks & Wildlife designation reserved for streams that meet a strict biomass and trophy-trout threshold — covers a small fraction of Colorado's trout water but contains most of its iconic fisheries.