Troutline

Fly fishing

New Mexico

Live flows, weather, hatch charts, snowpack, and stocking for 10 rivers and creeks across 5 regions.

Rivers
10
Regions
5
Fly shops
8

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.

Stocking — recent & upcoming hatchery plantsFull New Mexico stocking schedule →

Jemez Mountains

1 river

Caldera-country freestone streams around Jemez Springs — small, roadside wild-brown water on the Jemez, East Fork, Rio San Antonio, and Rio Guadalupe, most of it New Mexico Special Trout Water below the Valles Caldera.

NM

Jemez River

North-Central New Mexico

6 rivers

The Rio Grande Gorge and the Wild Rivers country north of Taos — hike-in freestone pocket water for wild browns and native Rio Grande cutthroat.

NM

Costilla Creek

NM

Pecos River

NM

Red River

NM

Rio Chama

NM

Rio Grande

NM

Rio Pueblo

Northeast New Mexico

1 river

Cimarron Canyon and the Eagle Nest tailwater country east of the Enchanted Circle — a small, granite-walled canyon stream packed with wild brown trout below the dam.

NM

Cimarron River

Northwest New Mexico

1 river

The San Juan River below Navajo Dam — a world-class high-desert tailwater where big rainbows and browns key on year-round midges and baetis in gin-clear water.

NM

San Juan River

Southwest New Mexico

1 river

The Gila Wilderness backcountry — walk-in freestone forks holding native Gila trout, the copper-and-gold rarity you need a free state permit and a long dirt road to reach.

NM

Gila River