Cimarron River

The Cimarron is a tailwater that doesn't act like one. It leaves the bottom of Eagle Nest Dam as a small, cold, tumbling creek and drops east through a granite-walled canyon alongside US-64, and within a couple of miles it reads like a mountain freestone — pocket water, plunge pools, undercut banks, willow tunnels, and beaver work — rather than the wide, even glide most people picture when they hear the word. What it lacks in size it makes up in density. New Mexico Game & Fish surveys have put wild brown trout in the canyon at roughly 4,000 fish per mile, so you're almost never casting over empty water. Most run 8 to 13 inches, but the browns spawn naturally here and the canyon gives up honest 16-inch-plus fish to anglers who work it patiently.

This is a stealth game more than a distance game. The stream is small and clear, the trout see you before you see them, and the willows and overhanging branches punish a big backcast — it's the rare river where an 8-to-9-foot 3- or 4-weight and a short, accurate roll cast beats a 9-foot 5. You fish close: short-line nymphing through the pockets, a dry-dropper picked into the seams, or a lifted dry over the flats on hatch days. Because releases are dam-controlled, the flow can swing on you. Moreno Valley snowmelt can bump and color the canyon in late spring, and mid-winter releases run low enough that fish concentrate and stress in cold, skinny water. The sweet spot is late spring through mid-October, and the canyon fishes best once flows settle after runoff.

Access is the easy part. US-64 runs the length of the canyon and Cimarron Canyon State Park holds 8 to 10 miles of public water with roadside pull-offs and three campgrounds, so you can leapfrog on foot all day. The trade-off is company — this is one of the more popular trout streams in northern New Mexico, and the roadside pockets near the campgrounds get worked hard on summer weekends. The reward for walking away from the pull-offs, or hitting the shoulder seasons, is a technical little canyon full of wild fish with a real sense of place. Eagle Nest Lake, the Red River, the Rio Grande, and Costilla Creek are all inside an hour if the Cimarron blows out or gets crowded.