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I have said many times that the San Juan River is not a dry fly river. And for the most part this is true. I mean you can catch fish on the dry, but usually you have better luck nymphing. However there are times that this is reversed like this time. Usually its when the sky is overcast, and occasionally with light rain, you will get some epic hatches. I mean, there is always midges out and about, but not too many larger fish are going to spend the effort to move to a single tiny midge. However when small BWO hatches happen, or the midge hatch is so thick there are clusters of them on the surface, the fish will start coming to the surface. When you see this, you might have one of the best times of your life fishing! Throw on a small dry fly and have at it. A better combo than I had on this trip would have been a Griffiths knat dropped to the small matts midge. The matts midge is a great imitator of a single midge, and the Griffiths imitates clusters off midges. It would be nearly impossible to see the single matts midge though with a cast further than a couple feet, so the Griffiths or some other indicator type fly is needed.

So this trip was not my best on the San Juan. Only one decent fish in the net on the river, but I took a quick drive down to a small lake close by and got a really nice brown trout! Wonderful fish, and almost better than what I was going for in that lake, which was carp. The reason why the river wasnt doing all that great was because they recently changed the water flow, which sent the trout deep for cover. Just a week before, a buddy of mine caught 10+ fish over 17", but the water flow change definitely messed things up.

The San Juan River is fishable year round. I have caught many fish while its snowing out. The river is a tail water, so it does not freeze up, and the temperatures stay relatively the same all year round. The winter is one of my favorite seasons to fish at the Juan because the river isnt as pressured, and the larger fish come out. The lake also turns over usually in late December and the river becomes slightly off color. For that reason, you can fish larger nymphs and even do really well on streamers. No more fishing the really tiny midge patterns you are used to fishing in the spring and summer. I find that you can get away with size 20-22 midge patterns, 18-20 red annelid patterns and some smaller bunny leeches and other streamers as well. In fact, I really like to fish a streamer under an indicator and drop a red annelid behind it. Also, you want to fish a bit more flashy this time of year.

The San Juan River is one of the most popular and productive river in the United States. Possibly the world. Located in North West New Mexico, in the middle of a desert, this tailwater is like a small oasis that comes out of Navajo Lake. This river has great fishing all year round, and has the potential for 50 trout days. It really is amazing fishing on the San Juan River! Being such good fishing, means that it is very busy there. If you have seen my other video's on fishing the San Juan River, you would see that there aren't too many times where there aren't people stacked shoulder to shoulder. However, the San Juan River isn't only good fishing right at the Quality River Section and there are a few places to fish where you can feel like you have the river all to yourself. The place I am fishing today is called Majestic Enchantment, and its a privately owned stretch of the river. The owner of the property charges a small fee to come and fish his 3 mile stretch of the river, and only allows up to 8 people each day to fish it. This water has many bends, and is tree filled so, this means, you probably will not see a single person fishing the entire day. He has spent time and money on improving his stretch of river and has turned it into an amazing fishery with large brown trout and good quantities of rainbows. The other nice thing about fishing further down river is that the bug population is different. You can fish larger flies, and there are even the possibility of baetis hatches. No more needing to nymph the size 26 midges if you don't want to.

Fly fishing on the San Juan River can be really good, and it can be really bad. Luckily the day that I had guests with me from FreshSaltFishing it was a good day fishing. We caught 7 browns that day, and most were really good sized. http://youtu.be/nyT4Y9fyBC I am always asked what flies I used to catch fish, so here are the lists of the flies I used, and also links to videos on how to tie them. Slump Buster: https://youtu.be/Pzi6fIDEsNs Simple Annelid: https://youtu.be/LrKL06HTSQY

I have never caught a Carp on a fly rod before, so I wanted to give it a try. Last time I went on the San Juan River I saw quite a few carp feeding on the bottom in a shallow section of the river. I wasn't setup for carp at that time and only had a 3wt fly rod with me. So I decided come back with my 5wt and come back for them another day. Turns out a 5wt is not really enough as well and this carp fought me for 21 minutes! Which felt like forever. By the end of the fight, I was so exhausted, I felt like my arms were gonna fall off. He was so large, and I was so tired, that I had trouble picking him up. They say carp fishing is like fishing for bonefish. They are finicky fish, that spook easy. You can site fish for them, but you need long, thin leader. They fight hard, and feel like your hooked onto the back of a freight train when they run. SO they make for a very formidable sport fish, one that many say is even tougher than bonefish. This is the first time I am fishing with my new vest, neck gaiter, and gloves. I love them! The vest helped by allowing me to bring water with me, and put extra things in the backpack. And even though the sun was in full blast, the neck gaiter and gloves kept me from getting burnt.

So I just got this new rod which is a 10' 3wt rod custom built by Midwest Custom Fly Rods. Its amazing! In many of my episodes I had trouble landing larger fish on these small 24-28 sized midges. I would always pull these small hooks right out of the fishes mouth. But now having a 10' light action rod, really helps me keep from putting too much pressure on the fish. I hooked 2 fish all day, and both were rather large. Unfortunately I did loose one of those fish, but that is still 50% for the day, so not too bad! Especially with these tiny midges. The fish I landed was about 18" and the one I lost I think was at least that, if not up to 20". Pretty fun day. The wind got really bad throughout the day, and I had to move to the braids in order to get out of the wind. There were times where I couldn't even get my fly line to stay on the water. Also there was tons of junk in the water. Mostly moss and algae, but some leaves and small twigs as well. I spent half the time cleaning my flies from this junk. So while I was able to land a great rainbow trout on a small midge which made it a great day, it was also a frustrating day as well. This was a Saturday, so it was really busy. Literally every spot was taken. I finally was able to find a few secluded spots away from people, but this took a lot of walking around.

This was a very fun day on the San Juan river fishing with some friends. A subscriber of mine had seen me at the pub a few weeks prior to this, and we talked about fishing for a while. We decided we needed to go out fishing and today was the day. We had a blast, and got to explore many parts of the river. While the day wasn't too productive, it was still a fun day. I hooked 11 fish, and brought in 7. Most of which were small, and all the ones I brought in were under 15". However I did hook a 17-18" fish but lost that due to bumbling around with my go pro since I wasn't filming at the time.

Well this video was a few months in the making. On my 2nd episode I met Joe out on the river. We were both fishing the San Juan River and struck up a conversation. He told me he made fly reels, so I was obviously instantly interested in taking a look at these reels. When I first saw the reel, I was blown away by the beauty of the design. It really is a pretty reel. However I hadn't gotten to fish with it until today. After fishing with it, I feel that the reel is really well made. Unfortunately I didnt get to hook any fish that stripped drag, however I could tell that it was smooth by just stripping line off. Also, while fishing with it, I liked the click sounds (very quiet which is good) and I liked how light the reel was. However it was solid feeling, unlike some super light reels that are hollow. This is really solid and really high quality. So the day on the San Juan was kinda slow to say the least. We didn't even see a single fish hooked by anyone until probably 11:30 or so. But even at that, it was few and far between. Finally after hitting Texas Hole around 1:00 the action picked up a bit and Joe was able to hook 3 fish and bring in 2 of them. One was a really good sized brown! 24" or so. So the day was fun even though it wasn't super productive. Its always great having someone else on the river with you as well. We enjoyed ourselves even though we weren't bringing fish in left and right. The San Juan River is a great river located in the north west corner of New Mexico. The river usually fishes amazing, and all through the year. However the last few weeks have been kinda slow as the river flows have been up and down and the weather isn't always permitting for nice fishing days. But there have been days on this river where I have netted 20+ trout. Its fun to fish and you will see trout everywhere when the water is clear. They will come up and nip at your waders.

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. I hooked 3 good sized trout on this trip, and brought in 2 of them. The 3rd one I lost never got on camera due to my batteries dying. This trip was a tough trip though even though I landed a few fish because I was struggling to get bites. I only had 3 hit all day, and I was lucky enough to bring in 2. Finally the hunt for the San Juan River trout is over, and I can move onto another river in my next series of fishing rivers. Some would consider the San Juan to be more of a creek as its not very wide, but there are spots that are very wide and those places are slow and shallow, but there are big trout all throughout this river. I landed 2 fish, and hooked a 3rd on this trip. That third fish was just too big, and too strong to bring in. I lost him about 2 feet from landing him in the net. All around a great day fishing. The first time I fished the San Juan must have been a once in a blue moon trip because I landed 20+ trout in about one hour. This river is considered one of the best in the United States, however its not quite like some of these rivers you see in New Zealand. There are lots of people, and its not so remote and secluded feeling. However its a great river still none the less. The rod I was using is a TFO Lefty Kreh Professional Series II which is a bit more moderate action then the rod I was using in the first video of this series.. 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.

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.