Beware of Bears
Bears live in the Enchanted Circle. You probably won’t see one. You might see one from a distance while you are hiking. You possibly could see one cross the road. The only sure way to see a bear is to foolishly leave food outside overnight.
Bears are intelligent creatures and have an amazing sense of smell. It doesn’t take long for a bear to realize that improperly stored garbage is an easy source of food. The pattern of events is predictable: A bear feeds on garbage and people enjoy the spectacle. After a few visits, the bear loses its fear of humans because the lure of garbage is greater than its natural tendency to avoid people. When the bear no longer fears humans, someone usually gets hurt and the bear is put down.
The best approach to avoid all this is to “bear-proof” your property by storing food, garbage, and other attractants (dog food and bones and treats, or an uncleaned barbecue grill, for example) away from bears. To decrease odors, store garbage in tightly tied or heavy-duty bags in bear-resistant dumpsters or garbage cans. You’ll find these receptacles in most of the towns along the Enchanted Circle. If a bear-proof container is not available, store the garbage indoors until it can be taken to a refuse site. Take advantage of regular trash pickup services.
Black bear exploring near Taos Ski Valley.
By the way, black bears come in a variety of colors, including cinnamon, honey, blonde, and reddish. You won’t find any grizzly bears since they last walked in New Mexico over one hundred years ago.
FISHING
in the Enchanted Circle
The Enchanted Circle offers some of the best trout fishing in the state and in the Southwest. You could fish for pike in a high-desert river in the morning and rare cutthroat trout in a pristine creek in the afternoon. You can fish in rivers and creeks in so many climates and in high desert streams, alpine brooks, small wild creeks, high country lake, tailwaters, and springfed year-round rivers. The trout waters of the Enchanted Circle offer fishing for all four seasons, private and public, beginner and advanced, and you can find lots of fly-fishing shops and tackle stores, rentals, guides, and outfitters. The kicker is the gorgeous native Rio Grande cutthroat you can catch, an ancient fish that only inhabits 7 percent of its original habitat and is found in several regional streams.
For fly fishers, the area has some notable hatches including a not-to-miss caddis hatch on the Rio Grande in late May. You will see stoneflies early, and caddis and mayfly throughout the rest of summer and fall. Grasshoppers make their presence known in August. Make sure to drop into a fly shop or two and pick up some local patterns that work better than your generic patterns. They can also clue you in to some techniques that work well in different waters.
The Rio Grande will demand at the least a 4-weight outfit, but we recommend a 5 or 6 weight. The other streams are small to medium, so if you fish a 3 or 4 weight, you’ll be fine. Sometimes the wind will kick up on some streams, especially the Rio Costilla, and that requires a heavier rod. For bait and spin fishers, the Rio Grande is ideal for your hardware and bait. You will want to make sure that you are fishing in water that allows your lure or bait because many waters have sections that are fly fishing only.
As far as keeping fish, you don’t want to keep any more than is allowed by regulation; and if you have to keep fish, keep stocked fish over wild. Be careful walking through redds (trout egg laying areas), and take care in releasing fish.
Because of the patchwork of federal and state administration of these rivers, regulations vary from stretch to stretch. Buy an appropriate license. Although you have hundreds of miles of public water, if you want something different, hook up with a guide or fly shop to get into private water. Each town has at least one fly shop and several guides, and they can offer half-day and full-day trips and even float trips.
You might wonder whether you’ll need to wear chest waders. That’s a personal choice, but in summer, wet wading or just hip waders are often all you’ll need. In the Rio Grande all year, and in other fisheries in fall and winter, the water gets cold, so we say yes to chest waders. Many fly shops rent rods and waders.
The great fishing of this trip begins at Taos then moves north to Questa, east to Red River, and settles southward to Eagle Nest. In a week’s time, you could fish the huge canyon waters of the Rio Grande for gargantuan pike and large browns, and then wade the intimate waters of the Cimarron River for wild brown trout that rise willingly to dry flies. You could angle in the rocky pools of the consistent Rio Hondo and then hike into the lower Red River to nymph for migrating cuttbows. You’ll enjoy a variety of fisheries, a diversity of fish, waters good for spin, bait, and fly anglers, and waters that range from meadow streams to canyon rivers, to big water, to intimate water and a big mountain reservoir. You could also boat around the big mountain reservoir, Eagle Nest Lake, fishing for cutts, snagging kokanee salmon and enjoying the mountain vistas of Wheeler Peak and Mount Baldy. Here’s a breakdown of fishing in the Enchanted Circle:
The Rio Pueblo is an underrated trout fishery.
RIO PUEBLO
This is the great-looking pocket stream that flows along the NM 518, from Tres Ritos, past Sipapu, past the Taos turnoff where it then follows NM 75 all the way to where it meets up with Rio Santa Barbara and forms Rio Embudo. From there, it dumps into the Rio Grande.
So how does it fish? We like it and fish it a lot, finding it has mostly stocked rainbows and some brown trout. The river sees lots of anglers (it’s by the road after all) but mostly at the easy access points. So here’s how to get to the pools and runs and pocket water: get in the water and wade away from the access points. You’ll find numerous pullouts and access points along the river. The trout aren’t big and they aren’t often wild, but the river is only twenty minutes from Taos and you can find entire stretches all to yourself. The river is good for fly or spin fishing. La Junta feeds Rio Pueblo and is fun for dapping for smaller trout.
The river gets a good amount of traffic at the easy access points and large pools, but for the most part Rio Pueblo is an ideal getaway spot for anglers. No, it’s not of the quality of the lower Red River, doesn’t have the trout density of Cimarron River, or provide the beauty of Rio Santa Barbara, but the rocky roadside river provides 15 to 20 miles of fishable, accessible trout-laden opportunity only twenty minutes south of Taos.
You’ll catch a mixture of wild and stocked trout, browns and rainbows. From its confluence with Santa Barbara to form Rio Embudo to its upper reaches at La Junta, anglers have pocket water, loaded with in-stream rocks and boulders, overhanging brush and limbs, trees, deep pools and shallow runs, and opportunities to fish all by yourself.
RIO SANTA BARBARA
This high-mountain cold clear stream is one of the unsung gems in the northern part of the state. You probably won’t find better cutthroat fishing than here. It’s likely the best backpacking public river in the region. Anglers have three forks to choose from and each has its own personality. Oh, and it’s also the most beautiful river and has the most pristine scenery of all the fishable rivers in northern New Mexico. You’ll be fishing in high altitude (9,000-12,000 feet).
While known for its colorful wild cutthroats, we’ve been catching more and more good-sized brown trout. This is unfortunate because it means that the native cutthroat that used to swim in the upper stream waters are being crowded out. The higher you go, the more cutts you’ll catch.
To get there from Taos, take NM 518 south to NM 75 and turn right (west). It’ll run into NM 73 which you’ll turn left on. Watch closely from here—a little over a mile you’ll see FR 116. Stay left and follow the sign leading to Santa Barbara Campground. Here’s your home base for a great