Fly fishing in Albuquerque

Albuquerque is roughly in the center of New Mexico. It is in a high desert with a river. The Rio Grande to be exact. People call it the Rio Grand River, which is redundant, but that is what most people call it. By the time the Rio Grande reaches Albuquerque most of the water has been drawn off for agriculture, watering lawns, and now that the city has installed a purification system for water it bought that is pumped over the continental divide, for drinking.  It is wide and shallow in the summer. People can be seen wading across its sand bars to cool down in the July heat.  The banks are lined with tamarack; willow and iron barricades that resemble tank traps to direct its flow. Its course has been redirected away from the down town area by means of these traps.  Set back from the bank are levies also lined with tamarack and willow.  These levies, in addition to keeping the river in its planned channel, act as the drainage controls that feed the irrigation ditches feeding the old neighborhoods.
There are no trout in the river.  There are endangered silvery minnows and most likely catfish, but no trout.
Albuquerque has a magnificent tall mountain to the east. The Sandias. They have lovely green fir forests, steep canyons with granite faces, and many small springs, but they have no trout.  As a matter of fact the only trout in Albuquerque come in trucks and are tossed into the clear ditch in the cold winter months to be snapped up by fishermen with worms, power bait. And lures.
There is a small pond in the city called Tingley beach.  It was built in the 30’s as a swimming hole and it is really just a wide place in the ditch system. My dad was a lifeguard there when he was in High School. Albuquerque spent a couple of million a few years ago, lined the ditch that is Tingley, put in a well and filter system and some trout.  Now you can fly fish for trout in Albuquerque.
I have caught a couple from the new catch and release pond, not exactly fish in a barrel but close. I prefer to sit on the bank of the main pond during the winter months with my daughter trying to catch stocked rainbow for dinner with that strange window putty called powerbait.  Yellow and orange are my preferred colors.
So my story about fly fishing in Albuquerque is really about not fly fishing in Albuquerque. It is about fly fishing from Albuquerque.  It is about leaving the tree-lined bosque, the rubber lined pond, the bustling city, the crowds, and the traffic. I have always said the best thing about living in Albuquerque is leaving Albuquerque. 
Because of Albuquerque’s central location at the intersection of two interstate highways, a person can get to a decent fishing hole by driving in any direction for fifty to a hundred miles. The Jemez is about forty miles to the north and has rainbow, Brown and native Cutthroat.  Some of these can get quite large.
If you want to drive a hundred to two hundred miles north you can find a fantastic place to cast your fly on the Rio Grande. The river starts in Colorado and races from the high mountains down into a valley where it slows and begins to feed the many farms and ranches. When it enters New Mexico it cuts six hundred feet through the high desert floor.  It roils and roars in spring through the gorge. Then it slows to pass little villages only to start again tearing around boulders and rock falls to the great amusement of rafters and gawking tourists.
It is the receptacle for the Rio Costilla. The Red River. The Rio Hondo. The Rio Embudo, and a host of other streams and rivers that meet it in steep canyons or peaceful valley floors.  Most of these cool high desert rivers contain trout that will take a fly.
The many streams in Northern New Mexico are some of the most beautiful waters I have seen. They flow amongst mountains trimmed with Cedar, Pinon, Fir, Ponderosa and Aspen. The Los Pinos can be fished while you watch the Cumbres and Toltec steam past with a load of tourists waving and marvelling at the rustic fisherman.  The Rio De Los Brazos is a miniature Rio Grande with a dramatic falls flowing from a magnificent sheer cliff for which it is named. The Pecos near Santa Fe has browns ,rainbows, native cutthroat, and so much open space you almost need a horse to get to the fish.
To the south are the towns of Ruidoso and Silver City, and some fine streams. The Gila river near Silver city offers miles and miles of wilderness fishing where you can cast a caddis to a native trout while walking upstream past ancient Anasazi dwellings built high into the rugged cliffs.
To the west, across the continental divide flows the famous San Juan, and the swift and ample Animas coming down from Durango.  The San Juan is a tail water so crowded with fish that it is usually just as crowded with fishermen. It pours out of Navajo lake and maintains a year round temperature of about forty degrees. This feeds the bugs all year, which in turn feed the trout.
  To the East lies Texas. But before you get there you can fish the lower Pecos near a three or four hundred-year-old Spanish village called VillaNueva. The Pecos continues on south to finally meet up with the Rio Grande somewhere near El Paso.
The closest trout stream to Albuquerque lies in the Jemez Mountains to the Northwest. Jemez Mountain is huge caldera that starts low in the desert and climbs to 12.000 feet. Down low, brown trout hide in granite riverbeds carved by epic floods spawned from lava bound lake eons ago.  Higher up in the fir forests are stretches of meadow stream with beaver dams that create lovely pools and marshes for trout to hide and feed on grasshopper, caddis, and stonefly.  High up at nine and ten thousand feet is the home of the Rio Grande Cutthroat, cut off from its namesake by miles of water too warm and infested with hungry brown trout to sustain their pristine lifestyle.  Recent attempts to restore this fish are gaining ground through fish barriers and stocking. 
The Caldera that the mountain was born from is now a National Preserve. Fishing and hunting are available for a fee. Oddly enough so is walking. The East Fork of the Jemez and The San Antonio scramble through miniature box canyons and  meander in vast open meadows. Trout there relish a caddis or hopper. They swallow ants and beetles and mayflies.  Big browns lurk in dark places and come out at night to feed on smaller fish, mice and whatever else falls into their pool. The view of these meadows is free of charge.
     So in order to fly fish in Albuquerque simply leave Albuquerque. Pack a lunch of canned oysters and crackers, some water, a nice stock of hoppers, caddis, pheasant tails, and hares ears in your fly box, a dry pair of shoes for the drive home. Grab a hat, your favorite rod, and go. Drive North, South, East or West.  If you choose the Jemez in the summer you don’t even have to leave until three in the afternoon. I hear if you leave a fake wallet and some glasses on your desk people will assume you will be right back.  I just get my ducks in a row and tell the boss” I’m going fishing.” If you get to the stream by five you have plenty of time to fish in the cool of the evening when the browns come out of hiding and move to the tail of long pools and wait for dinner to arrive.
    In order to leave Albuquerque in search of the wily trout you must gain some knowledge of how to use a fly rod. My education on this matter up until I was a young man consisted of knowing what a fly rod was and not much else. I think I learned the hard way.  Once I got the hang of using a fly and actually catching fish, I began a series of wonderful adventures that continue to this day.  The thing about fishing adventures is that they perpetuate themselves.  One adventure affects the next, which in turn influences your mind to create even more.  I will relate to you a couple of fish tales. 
I learned to fish on the Chama River in Northern New Mexico.  This is a good-sized river most of the year. It begins as the Rio Chamita high in the Cumbres. It flows through canyons, farms, a couple of lakes, more canyons and desert, and empties into the Rio Grande down in the town of Espanola about thirty miles north of Santa Fe. The Chama holds many memories for me. Good memories. I know in my heart it will provide many more in the future.
My dad would take us down a rough dirt road that led to the river. We would squeal with joy as we slid up and down the grooves in the floor of the cargo section of the old station wagon as it climbed and dipped down the road.  Dust would fill the air of the car and add to the lovely smell that only a fifty-four station wagon could produce. With his flattop haircut and dark rimmed glasses, he would walk upstream and find some trout for us kids by bouncing a salmon egg along the river bottom using an old bamboo fly rod, a Montague Sunbeam purchased from H. Cook sporting Goods. I’m sure he bought it from Mr. Cook himself.  Dad wouldn’t set the hook when he got a bite, but instead would show us kids where the fish were and we would bounce a salmon egg into the rocky pools with our Zebco 202’s, and usually catch the fish.  I realized years later that when I was learning to fly fish with that same bamboo rod, all I was really doing was bouncing a salmon egg along the bottom.  I just replaced the salmon egg with a hare’s ear.
I started fly fishing in earnest in college, and since it took me eight years to graduate I got plenty of practice.  I started on the San Juan.  I almost died the first day.
It was winter and my brother had a place up there.  John built armor for the SCA back then. The SCA was, and still is, a crazy bunch of medievalist who re-create the best part of the dark ages, which was apparently drinking beer, chasing women, and sword fighting with wooden clubs. His shop was right on the bank of the river.
On the phone he told me of the fantastic fishing.  You need waders he said.  I fished without them and almost drowned because my legs went numb he said.  This sounds fun I said so I bought some hip waders, grabbed the Montague Sunbeam, climbed into my Toyota truck and off I went. 
The San Juan has so many fish that they sometimes line up downstream of you and feed off of the stuff you kick up with your boots.  The experts call this San Juan shuffle and a few shady ones might get clients into a trout by doing this without them knowing what is going on.
 The fish everywhere can also distract a novice fisherman and cause him to step into the main channel while wearing hip waders.  Fortunately there is just enough suction against hip waders that they do not become anchors instantly.  Also fortunately, the novice fisherman decided to wear a wetsuit under his waders because he had heard your legs will go numb in the San Juan in winter.  This was the first of many swims I have had in various rivers.  I think I even caught a fish that day.  I know I didn’t land him though.  That is a whole other skill set to be mastered after one learns to walk and not swim. 
Since learning to fly fish I have also learned to fall, swim, row, paddle, and swallow water in trout streams. I have also learned to fall from banks, cliffs rocks and boulders.  These skills can be mastered much faster than you think if you just put your mind to it.
I will take swimming in freezing water over falling off a cliff or boulder any day.  I don’t think drinking had anything to do with my two major falls off boulders, but heat and dehydration could have played a part. 
One fall was on the Chama right where my dad taught me how to fish. I was with my brother John.  We were catching fish and having a great time.  We were on the first stop of a summer tour through southern Colorado. A trip filled with high mountains, a weekend camping with an Aussie hitchhiker, and a skunk, and a rock under my gas pedal that led me to believe I needed to fix the carburator in my Toyota.
 I had just caught a good-sized Rainbow on a woolly bugger in a large slow pool on the Chama. I was excited from the splendid fight he gave me. I was so excited I lost my balance while climbing over a large boulder to get to the next hole.  This was a very large boulder.  It is one of those boulders that started out at the top of the canyon wall and tumbled down to the river.  It created the pool I was fishing in.  Maybe it fell a thousand years ago or maybe in mine, or my dads lifetime.  I climbed to the top and promptly lost my balance and fell to the bottom.  There was a large chokecherry thicket that slowed my fall.  I had my arm stuck straight out below me and would have broken it except for the bush breaking my fall.  Even so I felt the sharp pain in my arm as it struck the ground inside that bush. It took a while to get free and I learned not to stop a fall from a boulder with your arm stuck straight out in front of you.
The second of many falls from boulders occurred in the Brazos under similar circumstances.  I was catching nice browns on dry flies when I climbed over some rocks to look at the next stretch of river.  The Brazos is made up round river rock in thousands of sizes. Some sections are fairly flat, but most of the river falls in terraces and pools around these great rocks.  These are not the rocks that have fallen from the cliff, but are the ones that were washed down the canyon eons ago by some catastrophic event.  They are round and smooth and slippery.
I had just climbed one of these terraces and was looking at the next hole.  I looked down below and saw a huge shadow slide under the rocks in the river.  I was so excited to see such a big fish that I fell off the boulder.
There was no bush this time.  I had my bamboo rod and the experience I needed to not break my fall with my forearm.  So to keep from breaking my rod and my forearm I took the blow on my face.  It was one of those bone wrenching falls that hurt everywhere.  This is what it must feel like to be an NFL lineman.  I lay there for quite a while before I rolled over and began inspecting teeth, bones, and my fly rod for damage.
I didn’t catch the fish.  I did however continue my quest up the canyon. I caught many fish that day up in the box.  I only stopped because of a storm coming and I was standing in a box canyon.  I may not be too agile, but being from the desert I know what a flash flood is.
 It was about three miles back to the cabin.  That hike was not fun. My knees ached. My back ached.   The drive home the next day in our new and very small Saturn ached.  The Fish dinner that night at Corkins’ lodge was one of the best however.  I had kept two nice rainbows caught on the way up the canyon.  They were kept fresh in my wicker fish basket lined with damp grass and wild strawberry leaves.
Corkins’ lodge is a fantastic place to visit. Providing you have quite a bit of extra cash.  It is not a place we visit as a family often.  It is worth the expense though. Corkins’ is a bunch of Cabins, a small pond with stocked trout. A swimming pool. A rec room and deer wandering about the grounds.  It also has one fantastic trout stream full of round slippery rocks.
 My dad fished this stream right after the war. My mom and dad fished together in those days.  I have 16mm films of my mom and dad catching trout in Northern New Mexico by bouncing a salmon egg along the bottom with a Montague Sunbeam.  I transferred them to CD so my grandkids can see them some day.  I am also refinishing the Montague Sunbeam in Hopes of getting another fifty or sixty years out of it.
I fished quite a bit with my dad when I got older. He instinctively knew how to fly fish.  I don’t know if he ever fly fished before I started taking him. I know I never saw him fly fish before we started our trips to the San Juan. He would put a bunch of salmon eggs in his lip like tobacco and fish with a fly rod.  So He knew where the fish were and how to use a fly rod.  Getting them on a fly came natural to him.  He is still with us, but he can’t get on a river any more.
Fishing with my dad and my brother on the San Juan has led to a whole string of adventures.   These adventures have taken me to the Snake River. Down the Colorado River. Up to alpine lakes and wilderness streams in Montana. 
When my dad could no longer wade a river we began to hire guides to take us out on drift boats.  I did not know it at the time but this simple fact would lead to many a grand fishing trip.  You see I eventually built my own drift boat and took my dad and my friends on guided fly fishing trips of our own design.  This is how I came to adventure on some of Americas’ best trout waters.
Each time these adventures begin from Albuquerque.  Perhaps I will get to take dad to Tingley this winter and catch dinner with my new Zebco 202 that my kids gave me for fathers’ day.  I will try the yellow powerbait. Maybe even go swimming. My dad is a lifeguard after all.