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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.