Terms of Use

troutchallenge.com and the Trout Challenge app

Effective date: September 7, 2026

The short version

• We are not the state, and nothing here is official. We keep your log. The agency decides what counts.
• Regulations change every year. We link to them and we do not reproduce them. Read the current rules for the water you are standing in.
• Your photos are yours. We take only the permission we need to run the service, and no more.
• The fish illustrations belong to the artist, not to us. Please do not lift them.
• Free, and staying free for anything a program gives you free.

Three minutes and you have read the whole thing.

Who we are, and who we are not

Trout Challenge is an independent project, built and run by Iverson Creative LLC in New Mexico.

It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the New Mexico Department of Wildlife, the Western Native Trout Initiative, or any other agency, program or organization.

We do not run a challenge. We do not accept submissions, review them, judge a photograph or award anything. Those programs belong to the agencies that run them. What this site does is help you keep track of what you caught and where, learn to tell the species apart, and put a submission together when you are ready to send one. You send it. They decide.

When the app says you appear to have met what a program asks for, that is our reading of your own log. It is not a determination, and it is not worth anything until the people who run the program say so.

We never charge for anything a program gives you for free.

Rules, regulations and what we tell you about fish

Bag limits, permits, seasons, license fees and tackle restrictions differ by water and change every year. We link to the agency’s current rules. We do not reproduce them here, because a stale copy of a rule on a third party website is how people end up in violation while believing they are doing the right thing.

Where we use an agency’s data or quote its rules, we say whose they are and link to the source. Where we ask something of you that the law does not require, we say that too.

Our conservation and handling guidance is our reading of the science and of the agency’s own management, offered in good faith. It is not a regulation and it is not professional advice. Where the guidance and a rule differ, the rule wins.

Read the current rules for the water you are actually standing in, before you fish it.

Your account

You need to be 13 or older to create an account. When you sign up we ask your date of birth, and under 13 we will not open one.

Keep your email account secure, because it is how you sign in here.

Give us real information in your angler profile. A submission built on a wrong license number or a wrong CIN will not be accepted by the agency, and we cannot fix that from our end.

You can delete your account whenever you like. We can close an account that is being used to abuse the service, and if we do, we will tell you why.

Your content, and what we may do with it

Your photos and your catch log are yours. We claim no ownership of them, and nothing here gives us a right to publish them.

You give us permission to do exactly four things with what you upload, and nothing else:

1. store it, so it is there when you come back
2. process it, which includes making the smaller sizes the app displays
3. strip the metadata out of it, which we do on the way in and again on every copy that goes back out
4. transmit it when you tell us to, meaning when you assemble a submission and send it

That is the whole permission. It is not perpetual, it is not sublicensable, and it does not include publishing. It ends when you delete the content or your account.

We do not publish where you caught a fish, at any precision, and there is no setting that would let you turn that on. If we ever build anything public out of catch data, it will carry a species, a water name and a date, and never a location finer than that.

Sending a submission to NMDOW

The app assembles a submission for the New Mexico Trout Challenge. You send it. We are not a party to that program and we cannot vary any part of it.

Two of the program’s terms are worth reading before you enter, because they appear on the Department’s rules page and not in the email path that submissions actually travel.

The Department’s published rules state, about the photos you submit:

“A photo of their fish. These photos will become the New Mexico Department of Wildlife’s property to share on social media, promoting fishing in the state of New Mexico, the New Mexico Trout Challenge, and any other agency publications.”

The same page also says that finishers get “their name added to the New Mexico Trout Challenge Hall of Fame,” which is a public listing.

Those are the Department’s terms, in the Department’s words. We are not affiliated with the Department, we cannot change or negotiate them for you, and they may be updated without us knowing. Read the current rules before you send anything: New Mexico Trout Challenge rules.

What we do with your photos is separate and does not change: we strip the metadata, we never publish your locations, and we claim no rights in them.

What is ours, what is the artist’s, and what is the agency’s

Three different things, and they are not interchangeable.

Ours. The writing, the species profiles, the design, the code and the app are copyright Iverson Creative LLC, except where noted below. You are welcome to link to any of it.

The artist’s. The fish illustrations are © Joseph R. Tomelleri, used under a limited license for this site and the New Mexico app. All reproduction rights not granted to us are reserved to the artist. They are not ours to give away, so please do not download, extract, copy, republish or reuse them anywhere. If you want to license his work, he is at americanfishes.com.

The agency’s. Regulations, program rules and agency data belong to the agencies that publish them. We attribute and link them wherever they appear. We do not use any agency’s logo or seal, and nothing on this site should be read as coming from an agency.

Using the site and the app

Four things we ask, and they are the only ones that matter here:

• Do not upload photos that are not yours to upload.
• Do not upload photos of people who did not agree to be in them.
• Do not log catches that did not happen. It is a log for you, and a false entry only makes it worthless.
• Do not scrape the site, hammer the app or try to get at other people’s records.

We may be wrong

The site and the app are provided as they are, with no warranty of any kind. We do our best to be accurate about species, waters and program requirements, and we still may be wrong. Verify anything that matters with the agency, and if you are not certain what species you are holding, release it.

We cannot promise the app will always be available, that a sync will always succeed, or that a submission will be accepted.

To the extent the law allows, Iverson Creative LLC is not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from your use of a free service. Nothing here limits anything that cannot be limited by law.

Changes to these terms

If we change these terms we will update the date at the bottom and post the new version here. If a change is material, we will say what changed at the top of this page for thirty days.

Governing law

New Mexico law governs these terms.

Getting in touch

[email protected]

Iverson Creative LLC, New Mexico.

Last updated: September 7, 2026