By Kirk Deeter
Photos and video by Tim Romano

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I am a 6-foot-long cutthroat trout, wallowing near the bottom of Colorado's South Platte River. The water is perfect, not too high, not too low, 48 degrees and clear. I'm holding in the current with other trout, watching bugs float by. One is drifting right at my head. I turn for a closer look and-"foul hooked. I swim to the surface and spit the regulator out of my mouth. "Dang it, Bruce, you snagged me again." I'm in the middle of an experiment to find out what trout really do under the river surface. The only way to truly understand the fish, I figured, was to be the fish, so I got out my scuba gear and jumped in. Here's what I learned.