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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.

Florida Panhandle River Trip – Day 2

December 23, 2021
Adventure, Beer, Bucket List, Camping, Conservation, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, Food and Drink, Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Warmwater
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The next day I decided to drive a little further east and check out the only watershed in Florida that held shoal bass – the Chipola River. I scouted a few launch sites and debated my plan before settling on one. I was under the assumption that I had to have shoals to target shoal bass and from what I could tell at each launch site that I stopped at(and from what I saw in imagery online) that was going to be difficult. The water level must have been a tad higher than normal and there were no visible shoals at places where I thought there would be so I was flying blind on this one.

I put the boat in and started paddling up anyway. I drove all the way out here, I may as well fish. The clarity was pretty good and the weather was gorgeous – I took that as a sign that there was a good chance I’d catch something.

I paddled up until I reached a spring run tributary and was amazed at how clear the water was dumping out of this creek. I paddled/walked up the creek a little ways and spooked a ton of small fish – pickerel, bass, sunfish, shiner – there was lots of life here. There was no way for me to effectively fish the creek so I hoped back in the boat and started my downstream float and fish.

Shoal bass, like most bass, are ambush predators so my idea was to just strip streamers around any place I thought looked like a good ambush point – pretty standard bass fishing stuff, I know, it’s not rocket science though. If that area had discernible current around it I assumed that was prime territory.

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I flogged a good stretch of water, beating the banks and working areas around submerged timber, before I had a strike, which came from the timber pictured above. The eat happened on the bank side of the big limb as the current swiftly carried my boat around on the other side of the laydown. Things were precarious for a bit as I paddled myself back up to remedy the situation. At some point I figured I lost the fish when my fly line was caught on the limb, but as I worked to free the line with my hand I could see him still hooked and fighting. Luckily for me I had a solid hookset and I was able to bring the 12″ shoal bass to the boat.

I was pretty stoked for this fish! I did not have a lot of confidence in catching a shoal bass here. Like I said, not a shoal in sight, so I felt a bit out of place. It fell for a beat-up crawfish pattern that Blake had tied up a while ago. This fly has landed bass all over the place, from spotted bass in Louisiana to smallmouth in West Virginia and Arkansas to redeyes in Alabama and Georgia, and now a shoal bass in Florida. I’ll see if I can get him to do a step-by-step for it. It’s been a while since we’ve done one of those here. My favorite flies, and those that tend to be the most durable, are the flies that Blake ties. No matter the pattern, he just does a really great job.

With renewed confidence I kept on swimming that crawfish pattern around anything and everything I floated by and eventually caught the spotted sunfish above. It was a good sized stumpknocker that looked like he’d seen better days. I was happy to have caught something else because despite my confidence the fishing was terribly slow. The river was beautiful though with the cypress trees giving it a little Fall color. Part of me feeling out of place was the river was a little bigger than I like to fish. I’m a small water guy. I dig the creeks. So medium or large rivers always intimidate me.

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There were low limestone bluffs every so often that were super pitted, like the one above. Some of the most unique geologic formations I’ve seen along a river. I ended up catching my second shoal bass along one of these walls. It makes total sense too as bass love a bluff wall. They are scoured out far underneath what is visible and make excellent ambush spots. That made it two shoal bass on the day! I was pumped and paddled the rest of my way back to the launch looking to get back to the campsite before dark.

On the drive back I made the realization that I just caught two shoal bass below I-10. That seemed so crazy to me; the fish known as the “fish of the waterfall”, Micropterus cataractae, were still hanging on down here in Florida, well below the fall line.

I stopped at a local grocery and bought a steak and whatever beer they had that was local to celebrate accomplishing a goal that was probably meaningless to 99% of the general population. Combine that with a campfire and it made for a much better night than the rainy one I had the night before.