Montana, mecca to so many fisherman, is one of the few states in the country where wild trout can be found beyond the historic range, thanks to major, cold "tailwaters' that support trout well into the great plains.  One of the big issues in Montana is the prevalence of "exotic" species:  brook, brown, and rainbow trout, which have greatly reduced the range of native species such as the Westslope Cutthrout Trout.

Source: Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and Google Earth

This wonderful dataset was created by the GIS group at Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and provides 9 separate KMZ layers indicating the current range for the three "exotics" plus 6 native species: Arctic Grayling, Bull Trout, Columbia Basin Redband Trout, Lake Trout, Westslope Cutthroat Trout, and Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.  All 9 layers come in a single zip archive which you can download from the >>>MT Downloads link in the sidebar, which takes you to our download system.

Be sure to check out the datasets available for "Native" trout as well, many of which cover Montana.  The Westslope Cutthroat dataset we publish there has additional information not found in the Westslope Cutthroat layer here.

Recognize that many streams support multiple species, so the order in which you load these layers into Google Earth matters, as the higher layers will obscure the lower ones.  Also, the stream lines are "clamped through the ground".  If all 9 streams are turned on, Google Earth can sometimes get confused about how to display them.  For optimal clairty, we suggest turning them off and on as you need them.

You can display the stream name and other information about a stream segment by clicking on a segment.  You can also control the color and width of the stream plots: just right click on the layer name in the "Places" window.  Select "Properties" (Windows) or "Get Info" (Mac) and click on the "Style,Color" tab.