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A large amount of reservoir habitat (perhaps as much as 32,000 acres statewide) could potentially support coldwater species on a seasonal basis. As our supply of WD- fish declines and stocking restrictions to protect fishery resources are applied, part of the "lost" recreation days could be replaced by using seasonal catchable trout stocking in these nontraditional waters. Furthermore, the DOW may be able to achieve Long Range Plan fishing recreation goals (increase recreation days and satisfaction), as well as decrease the risk to protected habitat, by stocking WD+ catchable trout into waters that are far removed from the state's significant trout resources. In this manner, WD+ catchable production could be considered as a potential successful alternative in redistributing fishing pressure and thereby protect resources, but this would need to be a policy decision. Increased Emphasis on Wild Trout Management In this section, wild trout refers to those resources where self-sustaining salmonid populations are the primary fishery and where no stocking occurs. These include most headwater streams and many of Colorado's larger trout streams. The vast majority of these stream miles are not officially designated as Wild Trout waters. According to the 1992 Categorization System, there were approximately 377,000 coldwater recreation days (about 8% of the statewide total) in Optimum Use management. This compares with about 2 million coldwater recreation days in the Intensive Use category, or about 40% of statewide recreation days. With the goal of reducing the risk of WD exposure to protected habitats, one option would be to shift management emphasis from catchable (Intensive Use) or even fry or fingerling (Optimum Use) stocking to wild trout management, where very little stocking would occur. However, based on discussions with DOW fishery biologists, there may be very limited opportunity to increase wild trout management in coldwater lakes, since most fish caught from these habitats are stocked. In some cases, brown trout, kokanee salmon, brook trout, or cutthroat can reproduce, but the potential is largely dependent upon suitable upstream habitat that is usually insufficient to maintain a self-sufficient fishery, even if special regulations were applied. Switching to wild trout management in coldwater stream environments may be effective in reducing the risk of WD in protected habitats. The amount of coldwater stream habitat that provides average to excellent fishing in Colorado was estimated to be slightly more than 9,300 miles (Table 8). The west slope provides 69% of this stream fishery resource, which represents 56% of the available public coldwater stream miles in the state. Compared with the east slope, the west slope has four times the stream habitat rated excellent and twice the amount rated average to above average. Streams included in this average to excellent fishery category were presumed to have habitat of suitable quality to support a trout population and fishery using special regulations and no stocking (Nehring 1990). Given the almost 2,000 stream miles currently or potentially useful to native cutthroat and wild trout, an additional 7,300 stream miles would thus appear to be suitable for management as wild trout fisheries. 24