Finishing the New Mexico Trout Challenge

May 11, 2026
Adventure, Beer, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Food and Drink, Freshwater, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Wade Fishing
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As the title suggests we needed one more trout species to finish the New Mexico Trout Challenge – so that was the plan for the day – catch a rainbow trout in New Mexico. It sounds simple enough, but you never know how the day can go. I know more about native trout species than I do transplants, so the first thing to figure out was where the best place to do that would be – especially somewhat close to where we were in southern Colorado. We figured that may be in the Rio Chama so we drove to Chama and stopped in for breakfast before we started fishing.

We tried to head to some easy public access close to town and got confused when the road leading us there had a gate on it – which turned what I thought was easy, drive-up access into hike-in access. I wasn’t sure this was a good stretch of river and I’d hate to waste time hiking in to crap water, so we opted to head elsewhere. Not finding much in terms of easy public access in town, we decided to stop at a local business which had river frontage and asked them if we could access the water from their property – thankfully they agreed and we were able to start our rainbow quest.

Blake was able to get the monkey off his back early with his first fish being a rainbow. My first fish was a brown, so I had to sweat it out a bit. We were maybe an hour into fishing, but I was able to catch a rainbow as well. He actually took a big Chubby Chernobyl – trout on top are always my favorite kind of trout.

We kept fishing for a bit, wading up from our access. Although the river was surrounded by private land, most of the river frontage was not developed, so you really didn’t get that sense you were in town. It was nice stretch of water so we didn’t feel the need to rush out of there.

We caught a few more browns alongside our lone rainbows. Content with completing the NM trout challenge and the few browns we caught, we opted to head back into southern Colorado and set up camp for the night, closer to where we planned to fish the next morning. After setting up camp we were able to hit another stretch of water near the camp site. It was a recreation area where a stream flowed through a meadow into a lake, a beautiful setting, we figured there’d be trout there too.

Not long into the fishing I stuck a really nice brown. Outside of that brown the fishing was not great. I caught a stocker rainbow towards the lake, but the in the stream itself the fishing was tough. The brown trout certainly made the short evening session worth it, but so did the scenery.

A cold beer, a hot meal, and a campfire sounded like the perfect way to end day 4 so we headed back to camp. The next day would be our last day of fishing. As you’ve probably figured out, I’m a very goals-minded fishermen. I like to have some sort of checklist of things to punch off throughout a day or throughout a trip. With all of those goals I had in mind for this trip accomplished we now had one more day of fun fishing. Of course, it’s all fun fishing, but there was no pressure to catch anything specific heading into tomorrow. I had a river picked out that I had gotten one good report on, but I wasn’t able to get a lot of info on it otherwise. It looked pretty awesome on aerial photography, so it’d be another fun day of exploring on day 5.

Rio Grande Cutthroat Country – Day 3 continued

May 9, 2026
Adventure, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Hiking, Outdoors, Scouting, Sightfishing, Travel, Wade Fishing
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Man, it doesn’t seem very fair to write a blog post, end it with “to be continued”, and not actually continue the story, lol. Especially when the tale takes place on one of the best cutthroat streams I’ve ever fished. My apologies on the three year absence; the adventures never stopped, but the passion to document them sure has – hopefully y’all have found me on Instagram by now @mountainstomarsh

This place was special. A Colorado stronghold for Rio Grande cutthroat. I knew we needed to fish it on our trip based on research ahead of time, but also on the recommendations of people I trust. A lot of times places like that have a hard time living up to their billing – your expectations going in can be too great. This place didn’t have that problem. Cutthroat were tucked in seemingly every undercut bank ready to come out and eat a well placed dry fly. The fish made us look like pros that day.

I was originally worried about other anglers – whether they were there that day or just from the pressure they had put on the stream in the days prior, but that was really all for naught. When the fishing is that good time just kind of goes away, hunger never sets in, you forget about everything else going on, and are consumed by what you are doing – catching fish, lol. It’s an amazing feeling.

We fished our way up the stream, catching our way through beaver ponds, until eventually we ended up at a lake. What a dynamic fishery – a forested section to a meadow section to a section with beaver ponds and eventually a lake – I told y’all this was a special place.

Some time has passed by now and my recollection of the day is probably hazier than it would have been had I written this shortly after the trip, but from what I can recall we didn’t catch fish right away on the lake. There were fish holding too deep to sight fish, but there were also sporadic cruisers which you could try and cast to. As we made our way around we were able to catch some fish, but the fishing there wasn’t lights out – it was a fun challenge though and some of the fish we did catch were really colored up – some of the most vibrant reds were on trout from the lake.

What I do remember very well was that this was the toughest hike out I can remember ever doing, lol. After fishing as far as we did and for as long as we did my legs were shot. There were numerous times I had to stop and take extended breaks on the walk back. Time and neglect are not ideal ways to stay in shape and they definitely caught up with me on that day.

We managed to make it out before the sun set though and I will tell you that I would do this trip all over again just to fish this stream. Definitely a top 3 cutthroat destination that I’ve been to – right up there with Shangri-La – a stream we hit during our Wyoming Cutt Slam trip.

Rio Grande Cutthroat Country – Day 3

October 31, 2023
Adventure, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Hiking, Outdoors, Travel, Wade Fishing
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Day 3 was a long day for us, but it was so worth it. Rio Grande cutthroat trout were still the target, but we had crossed state lines and were now fishing in southern Colorado. This was a new watershed for us and one that was far more open and inviting than the tight little bluelines we fished in northern New Mexico.

We parked at the trailhead access and unfortunately the lot was not empty. It wasn’t crowded, but it looked like we’d run into another fisherman or two. Then a van pulled up while we were rigging up and a whole family with fishing rods dumped out. Now I knew for sure we’d run into other anglers. We had to hike in to get to where wanted to fish and these folks appeared to be very casual anglers at best, so hopefully we weren’t vying for the same water.

We passed the family on the trail as we were hiking in. Then we ran into two anglers on the hike in and while chatting with one of them we learned that they had fished the same stream the two days prior and done well. Now they were fishing a section downstream and they pointed out where they planned to finish the day, which wasn’t much further, and if we started there we’d have fresh water (at least as today was concerned).

I wasn’t really sure why’d you fish the same small stream three days in a row, especially with all the other great water in the area, but after our day of fishing was over, I came to understand why.

To be continued….