wtsobsessed
Member
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2011
- Messages
- 40
It's the time of year when local fishing "heats up" (in the unfavorable sense) and those of us who who are lucky enough to be able to go, start thinking about heading to the Rockies. My wife and I love NM, and even though it's not the best fishing in the west, it's where we go.
Frankly, there's not a huge amount of great fishing water in NM, and anything with any kind of reputation at all is overrun by aggressive Texans who park their Escalades streamside, and give you attitude if they think you're trying to fish on their beat.
My purpose in fishing is not to exchange testosterone-charged pheromones with my neighbor, so I'd nearly stopped fishing in NM until I discovered cutthroat streams. Typically you have to walk a mile or two at high altitude (which means the Texans are nowhere to be seen). The streams range from small to tiny. The fish are stunningly beautiful, sometimes bountiful, and usually willing to take a dry fly. Unless the stream is along a hiking trail (in which case I'll sometimes meet hikers), I've never run into another angler on one of these explorations.
Of course, as you head north, there's more coldwater habitat, and more and larger cutt streams. So, lots to do in Colorado and Utah, even more in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.
Even if your principal goal is fishing bigger, better known waters in the valleys, a day or two exploring some headwaters streams and catching Natives can be a nice break.
You'll find a ton of information about where to find Cutts on http://wildtroutstreams.com . We recently updated our coverage of NM, Colorado, and Utah, with new datasets mapping EVERY stream segment that holds cutthroat trout as documented in the conservation literature. The coverage of MT, ID, and WY isn't quite so slick, but it's still useful.
Below, see two photos, one of a tiny stream I love in NM where I had a magical day a couple of years ago. For about two hours, not a single cast of my #12 elk hair caddis was ignored. A typical result is shown in the next photo.
Frankly, there's not a huge amount of great fishing water in NM, and anything with any kind of reputation at all is overrun by aggressive Texans who park their Escalades streamside, and give you attitude if they think you're trying to fish on their beat.
My purpose in fishing is not to exchange testosterone-charged pheromones with my neighbor, so I'd nearly stopped fishing in NM until I discovered cutthroat streams. Typically you have to walk a mile or two at high altitude (which means the Texans are nowhere to be seen). The streams range from small to tiny. The fish are stunningly beautiful, sometimes bountiful, and usually willing to take a dry fly. Unless the stream is along a hiking trail (in which case I'll sometimes meet hikers), I've never run into another angler on one of these explorations.
Of course, as you head north, there's more coldwater habitat, and more and larger cutt streams. So, lots to do in Colorado and Utah, even more in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.
Even if your principal goal is fishing bigger, better known waters in the valleys, a day or two exploring some headwaters streams and catching Natives can be a nice break.
You'll find a ton of information about where to find Cutts on http://wildtroutstreams.com . We recently updated our coverage of NM, Colorado, and Utah, with new datasets mapping EVERY stream segment that holds cutthroat trout as documented in the conservation literature. The coverage of MT, ID, and WY isn't quite so slick, but it's still useful.
Below, see two photos, one of a tiny stream I love in NM where I had a magical day a couple of years ago. For about two hours, not a single cast of my #12 elk hair caddis was ignored. A typical result is shown in the next photo.
