Almost a year to the day has gone by since my last trip to the San Juan. Last year at this time we were headed to the Navajo reservation to spend spend Christmas at Toadlena trading post. If you are not familiar with with Northern NM Toadlena is a trading post that was setup around around 1909 which was centered around the Two Grey Hills and Toadlena style Navajo textiles. My dad has a good friend that is running this trading post. I got to squeeze one day in on  the river on our way up there and it was good. It was the time that I was really putting my fly fishing into overdrive and this was a good step from the smaller rivers of the previous fall. See, I have always been “into” Fly Fishing but I have never been religious about it. Well, I am now.  A lot has been learned since my last trip here and it payed off immensely.

We chose time over scenery on this trip and took the 550 instead of the pass to Chama. Normally I would suggest taking the pass especially if you have never done it but we just needed to get there this time. The anticipation was reaching critical level. So we got there and we got there fast ready to check in and get feet wet. Anyone who knows about the San Juan knows the local selection of hotels and we were all set to spend a couple days in the drab gravel-scape of Abe’s. Luckily, working off a tip from a local Fly Shop we secured a cabin at the Octagon Inn. If you have a choice, choose this place. I could get into all the details but I will shorten this up by saying they have thought about everything. You will not be disappointed.

There were considerably more people around than last year. Last year there was six inches of snow on the ground and the temps hovered around 25. This year was a lot warmer and no snow. My dad and I arrived on Friday afternoon, dropped our bags in the room and headed for the river right away. We didn’t go far, just up river from the bridge. There was a nice riffle there with a small chute. Already we could see surface activity. There were two or three fish porpoising on huge clusters of midges. The bugs were everywhere. We started subsurface with a local recipe as an attractor then trailing a grey bodied midge emerger as a dropper, size 24 if I remember correctly. It did not take long to get a little 14 inch rainbow and brown to the shore. After that the temptation of going dry was just too much.  I started with a small Griffith Gnat which worked well once the fish decided to take my cluster. You see, there were so many bugs on the water I do not think it had anything to do with the size or color it was simply a matter of when was the fish going to decide to eat my particular fly. Well, eventually it did happen and it happened to be a nice sized Rainbow, about 17.5 inches. Well, that would set the pr4ecedent for the rest of the weekend. All of my fish hovered right around that length.

With all that said I will just end this here and let you enjoy a few low quality iPhone pictures of some of the larger ones I pulled in. One day I will get another camera but right now keeping my supply of leaders, tippet, flies etc… is still priority…