- [Narrator] In my career, I've never met
a single person with his passion, ever,
and there's not even a close second.
- I get bloody.
I put my body into the capture of the hunt.
- The guy will go anywhere, climb any mountain
to catch a fish in a stream.
He's doing basically the work of a biologist
just as sort of a volunteer.
- The science is important because it's gonna help us
protect more populations of these fish that are,
some are only in one creek, some are in one river.
It may be just another trout but it's a special trout
and they're all special to me.
- [Narrator] Steve Macmillan, what's the first impression
you get when you meet him?
- Nice. That looks like a perky there.
- Yeah it does.
- And it's almost difficult to understand
him on the phone because he's so excited about fish
and he talks so fast.
The one word to sum up Steve is passion.
- I work in the big city, work long hours.
I take a lot of work home with me.
I have a lot of stress at work.
On weekends I find myself in these hills walking
long mountain trails to go up there
and try to catch a fish.
I feel like I own the place and many times
I do own the place.
- About four or five years ago was
the Nevada Native Slam Program,
a challenge to anglers in Nevada to catch
every native species, that includes Lahontan Cutthroat,
the Bonneville Cutthroat, Yellowstone Cutthroat,
Red Band, Bull Trout, and Mountain Whitefish.
- [Steve] So I began trekking the state to catch
these six species.
- It's not easy.
You need to travel great lengths to catch
some of these species of fish and they're in extremely
remote, rugged locations.
Well, Steve did it in two and a half months.
- For me, to be the first to achieve it,
it was very humbling.
The last fish was probably for most people
the easiest one to catch, but for me
I drove almost 3,000 miles over five trips
to catch it.
When I caught that thing, it was like winning
the Super Bowl.
For me, it's basically finding that spot,
knowing they're there watching, observing,
instead of just being in a rush.
I practice a technique I've named CPR.
Capture, photograph, release.
There we go.
And get a good shot for posterity.
- He documents everything that happens that day
and he gets stream temperature, air temperature,
lengths and weights of fish and pictures of that
and he'll prepare a report and send it to us.
He'll be out on a stream that we haven't been to
in 50, 60 years, and he'll grab a fin clip for us
and that fin sample is used for genetic analysis
to determine if, you know, that population is genetically pure
or hybridized.
He has found species of fish in places
that we had no idea about.
So he's doing the work of a biologist
just as sort of a volunteer.