Ramblin’ Fly Fishing

Most of the focus here is the Rio Grande, which carries seventy-four miles of designated Wild and Scenic river through the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. From roughly September through June the attention is on trout, meaning rainbows, browns and, once in a great while, the native Rio Grande cutthroat; because this is the Southwest the water can get too warm for trout in high summer, and the focus shifts then to smallmouth bass and the occasional pike. The lower stretch just south of Taos runs about eighteen miles with a highway beside it, so access is easy and it takes more pressure than the rest of the river, but the fish are good ones and the picky trout make it a stretch that suits both a first-timer and an advanced angler; most half-day trips and all float trips run down there, with floats fished from a raft. Everything else is remote and earned: a hike of about a mile each way with a six to eight hundred foot descent to the water and the same climb at the end of the day. The reward is solitude, mostly wild fish with plenty of rainbows, cutbows and browns, and every water type a trout angler could want, from classic riffles to huge boulders and pocket water. Flows are watched at the Wild Rivers Cerro, Taos Junction Bridge and Embudo gauges.