New Mexico

New Mexico's trout fishing is a study in contrasts between two rivers. The San Juan below Navajo Dam, in the high desert of the northwest, is one of the best tailwaters in the country — a cold, clear ribbon through sage and sandstone where rainbows and browns grow fat on a year-round diet of midges and tiny baetis, and where the Quality Water below the dam fishes shoulder-to-shoulder for good reason. The Rio Grande, cutting the basalt gorge north of Taos, is the opposite: a big, brawling freestone you hike down to, holding wild browns and native Rio Grande cutthroat in pocket water that almost nobody else is fishing.

The San Juan fishes twelve months a year on technical midge and annelid patterns — 6X and 7X, size 22-26, sight-nymphing to visible fish. The Rio Grande runs on snowmelt out of southern Colorado, blows out in May and June, and comes into its own in late summer and fall when the caddis and the big attractor dries bring browns up in the Box. Bring a willingness to hike for the gorge water; bring patience and small flies for the San Juan.