San Juan River Trout Fishing

As a trout fishing enthusiast, I just had to make a trip to New Mexico’s San Juan River. As a must visit trout fishing destination, the San Juan is a premier fishing hot spot. I flew in to Albuquerque and rented a car to complete the rest of the trek. From there I stayed at a motel called Abe’s. The rest of the article is an account of my San Juan river fishing experience

The first step of my san juan fly fishing journey involved asking a few of the locals in a fly shop. I was young at the time and only brought a spinning rod. After absorbing a little information about the river and its trout, I quickly pulled out and rigged up my dad’s spare fly rod. Spinning rods and lures can be used on the river, but you will have better success with a fly. Anyways, at the section of river that I fished, a trout had to be at least twenty inches in order to be kept. I believe that only one trout could be kept per day. Anyways, the funny part of the trip was that every trout that we caught was right around eighteen inches. I think one of them was nineteen, but they were some really nice trout.

If you are looking for tips on how to catch trout in the San Juan River, then I will fill you in on a few tips. The first thing you need to do is stop by a local fly shop. There you can learn what flies work the best for catching trout. The only fly that I remember using was called a UFO. All of the flies that we used were very, very small. Even more mysterious, the trout are really finicky about biting the fly. Rather than taking the fly all of the way down and alerting you with the sinking of the strike indicator, they simply peck at it. I know this sounds a little off, but you will be standing around missing fish if you don’t pay attention. I know this from experience. My dad and I fished for a day until a local came over and showed us the ropes. From that day on, we were able to key in one the behavior of the trout. A subtle twitch of the float indicated a strike. This is not to say that they wont take the indicator all of the way down. I fished a section of deep rapids where the trout took the fly all of the way down. The reason for this action was due to the fact that the trout had little time to react on whether they were going to eat the fly or not.

 For those who would like to know, the only species of trout tha tI caught while fly fishing was the rainbow trout. I also caught a cut-bow as well which is a mix between a rainbow and a cut-throat trout.

 The San Juan Shuffle is a name for wading through the river. When you walk across the river bottom, you kick up all kinds of nymphs and worms. This movement attracts fish and they feed right at your feet. When I went, the locals told me not to do this.