Newsletter - September 2024

I look forward to sharing my 20” fish stories at the upcoming Fly Tyer’s Round

table on the first and third Tuesday of the month at North Domingo Baca

Multigenerational Center, 7521 Carmel Ave NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113.

This summer has also been a very productive summer when it comes to fly

fishing clinics and conservation projects, as I am sure Bruce and Ron will highlight later in this newsletter. I was lucky enough to be able help with one of the fly-fishing clinics this spring and regret missing the fun of watching others catch their first fish, fly fishing during the other clinics. I can only tell you this is a thrill that can only be realize if you volunteer to help out yourself.

On a more serious note, we are looking for a replacement for our current Vice

President, Bruce Newton, as well as a new Membership Chairperson for Dave

Klosterman. Bruce and Dave have said that they will help their replacements during the transition period. If you are interested in being a more active member and guiding the future direction on New Mexico Trout then please contact me or any New Mexico Trout Board member.



I will close with this thought; fish eat twelve months a year!

Tight Lines

Your President

Rick

Getting ready:

 Check and clean fly lines. Get rid of “lake film” and dirt.

 Leaders: check and replace if brittle, discolored or wind knotted.

 Tippets: Use fluorocarbon only. It disappears in the water. The result is you can get away with stronger/larger diameter tippets to land big trout. Any tippet below six pound test really has no purpose in lake fishing.

Use Seaguar fluorocarbon in 200 yard spools for tippet. A 200 yd spool of ten pound test Seguar costs $24 at Cabela’s. Contrast this with Rio flouro tippet at $13 for only a 30 yard spool. Trout Hunter is even worse: 50 meter spool (54.7 yds) for $30.

 Knots: Learn and use a loop knot. The Rapala knot is a great one. This knot enables you to fish a strong tippet and still allows for fly movement in the water.

 Reels: Clean and lube.

When to go:

In general, you want surface temps to drop into the low sixties. I recently heard that a lake above 9000 feet had a surface temp of 62 deg. F, with good fishing for 12-13” trout. Temps in the low sixties usually occur in September, depending on lake altitude. Once surface temps drop into the fifties, expect good fishing every time.

 September: Fish lakes above 9000 feet elevation.

 Late September into October: Fish lakes around 7500 to 8000 feet elevation.

 Mid-October to ice up: All lakes should be good.

Flies: Fall hatches feature smaller bugs, so smaller flies in early fall are a good way to go. I fish smaller buggers (#12 and 14) in early to mid fall. In October and November I fish larger buggers as the trout are packing food in for the winter. In late fall, fish big streamers/buggers around the weed beds. You’ll be

glad you did.

Happy Fishing!

Dave

Membership Chairman

"Fishing consists of a series of misadventures interspersed by occasional moments

of glory."

Howard Marshall



"Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in

old clothes."

Don Marquis

"Fishing and hunting are the only two sports in which

the other party doesn't

know it is playing."

Annonymous

"Fishing in rainy conditions may make fishermen seem crazy to the great mass of unimaginative people, but then few fishermen care

what they think."

John Gierach

“Fishing and writing matter because the moment

matters as anticipation as experienceand memory."

Christopher Camuto

"Fishing is a perfectable art, in which nevertheless no nman is ever perfect."

Gifford Pinchot

Over the years, many hundreds of cottonwoods were wrapped with chicken wire or woven wire fencing in the reach from upstream of the Spanish Queen day-use area down to the confluence with the Rio Guadalupe. Most of the cages are now degraded, rusty, snagged with debris, and, in some cases growing into the encircled tree. Jemez District staff want to remove all the cages, but they didn’t have enough information to estimate the scope of the work. They reached out to New Mexico Trout to provide volunteers for a one-day removal project on part of Jemez creek.

Attitudes regarding beavers have changed over the years. Once considered to be a nuisance and severely reduced by trapping, beavers are now recognized as a valuable part of riparian ecosystems. Their dams slow runoff, retain water in dry seasons, raise the water table, and create streamside meadows. Many current stream restoration plans involve construction of Beaver Dam Analogs (BDAs or artificial beaver dams) to help jump start recovery of degraded streams. The idea is that BDAs, together with willow planting and fencing out cattle and elk, will, after a few years, create habitat that allows beavers to move in and maintain it as 24/7 hydraulic engineers.

There are no plans to construct BDAs or cattle fences on Jemez creek below Jemez Springs. However, USFS staff consider the remnant cages to be an unnecessary hazard to visitors and wildlife, and they prevent the proper functioning of the riparian area during overbank flows in runoff. The freed gallery cottonwoods will not be seriously reduced by the few beavers present. Any loss of mature cottonwoods will be compensated by regeneration, thus restoring a more balanced age distribution.

On July 13, a dozen NM Trout volunteers met three Jemez District staff at the Spanish Queen day-use area on Highway 4 south of Jemez Springs. Armed with fencing tools, wire cutters, and metal shears, we dispersed into the heavily overgrown riparian area on the east side of the creek and began removing cottonwood cages and then dragging them out to the road for pickup. Practically every cottonwood between the creek and the highway was caged. Many were in undergrowth that was difficult to penetrate. Most of the cages were mangled, probably from being snagged by debris carried by overbank flows during runoff. Some trees had grown into the cages so that the wire was

embedded in their bark.

The volunteers worked hard and by noon cottonwood trees

along several hundred yards of stream bank and riparian area were freed from more than two pickup loads of old wire. The Club provided a lunch of Rudy’s Barbeque for volunteers and FS staff.

After lunch, Jerry Burton gave an informal seminar on his techniques for fishing narrow, heavily overgrown streams such as the Rio San Antonio in the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP). On the San Antonio for example, there are relatively few trout in the open areas that can be targeted with a conventional fly cast. If you can see those trout, they can see you, and they spook readily. Tall grass arches over most of the water and flies are snagged before they reach the stream surface. But those areas are where most of the trout are, and they are less easily spooked than those in the open places.

Jerry ties a variant of his foam hoppers that are heavily weighted with (lead free) wire. Thicker foam compensates for the weight so that the hopper flies still float. Weighted flies cast or dabbled to the grass-covered areas can drop through to the water surface without hanging up, which frequently triggers a strike.

The Jemez District staff were very pleased with our volunteer work and they will use the data to plan the project to complete the cage removal on the rest of Jemez Creek.

Hope to see you out there!

Ron

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