Duranglers

Duranglers guides the San Juan River below Navajo Dam in northern New Mexico, about a sixty minute drive from the shop in Durango. Wade trips work the upper flats and the Quality Waters, reaching almost a mile of water up river toward the dam; float trips put in at the Texas Hole and cover lower water that wading anglers cannot reach. The river fishes all year, with midges, small mayflies, annelids, leeches and scuds making up most of the food, and patterns running to midge pupa, WD-40s, RS-2s, San Juan worms and parachute or sparkle dun mayfly imitations. Rainbow and brown trout are the fish. Quality Water wade trips are $525 for one angler, $575 for two and $700 for three; Quality Water floats are $525 or $575; and a lower river float is $625 for one or two. A winter rate from December through February drops those to $450, or $550 for a party of three on foot. Trips include private instruction, terminal tackle, and a rod and reel if needed. The staff counts more than forty years of guiding on this river.

The Animas is guided as well. Duranglers works the Quality Water section, where the trout average sixteen to eighteen inches and the trophy fish run past twenty, the town stretch through Durango with a put in two blocks from the shop, the Animas Valley north of town, private water to the south, and the upper canyon reached on the Durango and Silverton narrow gauge railroad. Rafts and drift boats float it and wade days are walked. Floats run from late spring into midsummer, big streamers in spring and dry flies through the summer, for brown and rainbow trout. Rates run from four hundred and fifty to seven hundred dollars according to party size and water, with a four hundred and fifty dollar winter special.

Duranglers also guides the Dolores, and treats it as two fisheries. The lower river is the tailwater below McPhee Dam, completed in 1983: a roughly twelve-mile fly and lure catch-and-release stretch running from the dam down to Bradfield Bridge, with public access starting immediately below the dam, wide sandstone canyon around it and easy wading over low gradient. The shop puts flows at roughly thirty to forty cubic feet per second in winter and seventy to ninety in summer, with spring dependent on snowpack, and describes a good population of twelve to sixteen inch fish with some over twenty. Blue-winged olives are called the most consistent hatch, backed by pale morning duns, caddis and terrestrials, and heavy dace and sculpin populations make streamers pay; June through November is the season given for the lower river. The upper Dolores is a different animal, draining the high country as two branches through Rico and into McPhee Reservoir at the town of Dolores, and the shop calls it prime dry-dropper pocket water, euro nymphed in the cooler months. Colorado river wade trips are listed at 525 dollars for one angler, 575 for two and 700 for three, with float trips other than the Rio Grande at 625 for one or two.