Imagine your favorite trout stream during a prime evening hatch, a stunning sunset providing the backdrop for an aerial ballet of trout dancing about the surface.

Now picture that same fishery void of life, not another rainbow for miles.

That’s the nightmare many Colorado anglers faced the past three decades after some of the state’s finest trout fisheries were decimated by whirling disease.

The state’s rainbow trout population began to dwindle in the 1980s when the parasitic spore was first introduced, and the Colorado Division of Wildlife has been searching for a solution ever since.

It appears that nightmare could be over.

According to The Associated Press, state officials plan to restock many lakes and streams in 2008 with a new strain of rainbow trout that has shown resistance to the disease.

That’s good news for Colorado trout aficionados, many of whom have been limited to fishing for trout in the high-country waters that have escaped the disease.

For more on the rainbow trout, be sure to check out our breakdown of the species along with a recent article on fishing for winter steelhead.

Photo by Brian Milne