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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.

Rio Grande Cutthroat Country – Day 1

October 17, 2023
Adventure, Camping, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Hiking, Outdoors, Retail, Travel, Wade Fishing
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Blake and I flew into Colorado Springs in July to target Rio Grande cutthroat trout and finish out the New Mexico trout challenge we started a couple years ago in the southern part of the state with the Gila trout.

I used a mix of sources to plan this trip out, but New Mexico Game & Fish and the Western Native Trout Initiative make it very easy to find where you need to go to target these fish. I’ll be very honest and admit that it takes some of the fun out of it with how free and available information is to find these days. This is not necessarily a complaint because the more people that care about the fish the better and the only way to really care about something is to experience it, so in that way the available knowledge is appreciated, but the process just isn’t the hunt that it used to be. I can pretty much figure out in a night what use to take me weeks. It’s still rewarding to put in the effort to travel out and catch something you’ve only seen online, I don’t think that will ever change.

We started our day with a stop at The Drift Fly Shop in Pueblo and the guy working behind the counter couldn’t have been any nicer. He wasn’t able to give us much intel on the area we were headed, but he was very pleasant and engaging. We stopped at another shop later in our trip that was in the area we were fishing and we didn’t get that same feeling. It was pretty much just a big circle jerk of guides who looked at us like we just broke into the place. There was one young guy that sold us flies who at least tried. I just hate when fly shops give me bad vibes, I mean we all enjoy the same thing, why would my presence put you off? Fly shops can go either way in my opinion and if you’ve got a good local one take advantage of it.

After the customary Wal-Mart stop for supplies we continued onto our destination, which was in northern New Mexico, where we set up camp and then hit the nearby trailhead to hopefully take us to some RGCTs on day one. The drive was a pretty one; I’ve never been to the southern Rockies, it’s such an interesting mix of mountains and desert. We passed dust devils, prairie dogs, and pronghorn on our drive, and I loved every bit of it!

It did not take long at all to catch a fish. In fact the first hole I stopped in a brown whacked my dry. I think Blake’s experience was similar. It’s been customary for us to take a picture with the first fish just in case we never catch another, so we put check marks next to a New Mexico brown trout on pretty quickly on day one.

The stream was a tight one with a pretty good amount of elevation change and a healthy amount of brown trout. If you could find a place to get a cast off you generally had a really good shot at catching a fish, they were there, casting to them was just tough. North Georgia prepared us for this though! If you can fish a blueline up there you can fish a blueline anywhere.

I vaguely recalled a barrier on this stream in my research and we hiked the approximate distance I thought it was from the trailhead, but we did fish a fair amount below it to start. We ended up finding the actual barrier falls on the hike back out, but as you can see above, I was able to find a Rio Grande cutthroat trout somewhere above it – my first one!

We quit fishing not long after that fish simply because we ran out of daylight. It’s been a while since I’ve hiked out of somewhere in the dark but this was one of those days. We probably covered more ground than we should have, especially on day one, but I was fueled by adrenaline and excitement, it would have been tough to pull me off the water otherwise.