Blue Yonder Fly Fishing

Snaking through the Rio Grande Gorge, the big river is by far the most challenging fishery in the Taos area. Browns are the most prevalent trout, some of them very large, alongside good populations of well-sized rainbows and cutbows, with northern pike in abundance and smallmouth bass through the lower stretches from Pilar south to the county line. Access splits three ways: NM 68 gives vehicle access from Pilar south, NM 567 runs beside the river into the Orilla Verde Recreation Area for ten or eleven miles up to the Taos Junction Bridge, and the upper box from the Red River confluence and above is reached on hiking trails that start in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Area about thirty miles north of Taos. The box fishes well from September into November. The most famous hatch on the river is the caddis emergence, beginning early to mid-April below Pilar and moving upstream toward the Taos box, best fished on the leading or trailing edges rather than at its peak; winter midge hatches near Pilar can be heavy enough for dry fly fishing in mid-winter. The Cimarron is the other side of the coin, a tailwater out of Eagle Nest Lake running eight miles through Cimarron Canyon fifty-five minutes east on US 64, where browns predominate, fish measure five to twenty-two inches and average ten to twelve, a stonefly hatch comes off in late May or early June and runs into July, and flows between nineteen and forty-five CFS are ideal.