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Four or five years ago, I heard mutterings of this rare species of trout found only in a limited number of watersheds in Arizona and New Mexico. Further research revealed that it was a strikingly beautiful fish and bore a name that somehow seems to encapsulate the ruggedness of the American Southwest in four letters -- Gila (hee-luh). The word is a synecdoche; literally, it means "running water which is salty," but its mere utterance conjures images of mysterious arroyos, of endless rimrock country caught in perpetual sunset, and of the cryptic wriggling creatures that call such a place home.
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