San Juan River, New Mexico

There's a spot in northern New Mexico called Four Corners, where you can stand on four states at one time: New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. Not far from there, near Aztec, New Mexico, the San Juan River begins it's journey to the Colorado River at the base of Navajo Dam, a large earthen dam completed in 1963. The dam impounds snow melt from the Colorado Rockies just a few miles to the north. The 400 foot high dam was constructed to provide irrigation water to the region.

The San Juan River below Navajo Dam holds about 80,000 trout, rainbows and browns, in the first 4.5 miles. It is one of the best tailwater fisheries in the United States and is designated quality water. The average trout is about 17 inches long, but there are plenty of trout over 20 inches. Trout thrive in the river because of the water released from the dam is 40F year around and as a result you can fish the river 365 days a year. I fished the San Juan on December 26th in 2007 and had a 20-fish day.

The first time I fished the San Juan was truly a learning experience; something I had never done before. The preferred technique is nymphing with a variety of #18-#22 midges and emergers, although dry flies and even wooly buggers can be quite productive. I use a 8'-6", 5 wt rod with a floating line, a 10-12 foot 5X tappered leader and a 6X tippet; these fish are very leader shy. Two flies are attached to the leader, an attractor, and then a second fly about a foot below that. Small split shot are pinched onto the leader about 18 inches above the attractor, and then a strike indicator is positioned several feet above the split shot; the exact position of the indicator depends on water depth. The idea is to get the flies down on the bottom and drifting naturally, which means absolutely no drag and a lot of line mending. You can fish from a drift boat or wade; I like to do both.

The relatively cold water and the presence of lots of insects insure rapid growth rates in the San Juan. I read somewhere that a San Juan trout has to consume about 3000 midges per day just to maintain its weight, even more to gain weight. If you do the math that means that each trout is taking a midge every 30 seconds! If you take a sample from the stomach of one of these trout it will generally be chock full of midges and other small insects.

At times there is a lot of fishing pressure on the San Juan and for that reason I prefer to fish it on weekdays between October and March and I have never had a bad day on the river, whatever that means. One might think that fish in a river like this would be "beat up", but I have found the fish to be in very good condition. In the first 4.5 miles of the river fishing is strictly catch-and-release with barbless hooks; although that is the only way I fish everywhere I fish.