Episode 2 - Fly Fishing The San Juan River

If you haven't ever fly fished the quality waters on the San Juan River in New Mexico, you are missing out. Trout are everywhere, and its difficult not to hook a few. The problem there though is that your best bet for hooking trout is with small midges in the 28-32 size verity. Also you need to use really light tippet like 6x. Flourocarbon is best. Because the river is fished quite heavily, the trout come accustom to knowing what is a fly, and what is not, so you need to fish really light. These are not small trout, and therefor its difficult to bring them in. The small hooks rip out of their mouths, and the light tippet snaps when you put any pressure on the fish. Fighting a large trout can take you 10-20 minutes before getting it in, and by that time you have lots of chances to loose them.

The rod I was using is a TFO Lefty Kreh Professional Series II which is a bit more moderate action then the last rod I was using. However it didnt seem to help much with bringing the larger sized trout in on these tiny nymphs. I tried very hard not to put much pressure on the fish when fighting, however I still lost them.

The reel I was using is a Sage 2250, and the line was Rio Mainstream WF5F, a simple $40 fly line. You don't need much more then the mainstream line on this river due to not having to cast very far to often.

I hooked 4 good sized trout, and one was well over 20". In fact, the one I lost due to it wrapping around "big rock" was easily 22-24". I just could not put enough pressure on him to steer him clear of the rock.