Elephant Butte is New Mexico's big water: a Rio Grande desert reservoir whose stripers, white bass and walleye concentrate harder the lower the lake gets. Watching the level trend is half the strategy; the dawn boils are the reward.
Reports current for Friday, October 23
Every one of the 13 New Mexico waters we cover has a live read this morning. 1 is scoring 4 out of 5 or better and 4 are slow. Water runs 47 F to 74 F. Pressure is holding steady on most of them, so the day comes down to water temperature and wind. 6 have a better-than-even chance of rain.
Best right now: Ute Reservoir 4/5, Abiquiu Lake 3/5, Bluewater Lake 3/5
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
New Mexico's big water: a desert reservoir with the state's best stripers, white bass and walleye.
The San Juan below Navajo Dam: 3.75 miles of catch-and-release Special Trout Water inside Navajo Lake State Park.
The two-state canyon behind the San Juan: houseboat water of pike, smallmouth and kokanee stretching from New Mexico into Colorado.
New Mexico's canyon classic: brown trout pocket water through red-rock and pine, an hour from Santa Fe and centuries from hurry.
A no-wake lake at 7,167 feet: Heron holds trout and kokanee in the northern New Mexico high country.
Conchas Lake: a state park reservoir northwest of Tucumcari where New Mexico Game and Fish reports walleye, white bass and both black basses.
A Canadian River reservoir nearly 13 miles long at Logan, where New Mexico's fall surveys find some of the state's highest white bass numbers.
Abiquiu Lake on the Rio Chama: a Corps of Engineers reservoir the Corps calls excellent at times for walleye, smallmouth and trout.
A no-wake lake on the Rio Grande: Cochiti holds walleye, pike and bass in quiet water below the Jemez.
A high desert trout lake: Bluewater grows tiger muskie alongside rainbows at 7,400 feet in western New Mexico.
The Rio Grande in the Taos gorge: an 800-foot canyon in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, reached on foot.
The Cimarron below Eagle Nest Dam: wild brown trout water through Cimarron Canyon State Park, with a 1.4-mile catch-and-release reach.
Eagle Nest Lake: a state-park lake at 8,200 feet on the Enchanted Circle, stocked with trout and kokanee, where every pike caught must be kept.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: March.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
| Water | Type | County | Live gauge | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elephant Butte Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Sierra | USGS | Mar |
| San Juan River (Navajo Dam) fishing report | River | San Juan | USGS | Apr |
| Navajo Lake fishing report | Reservoir | San Juan | modeled | Apr |
| Pecos River fishing report | River | San Miguel | USGS | Apr |
| Heron Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Rio Arriba | USGS | Apr |
| Conchas Lake fishing report | Reservoir | San Miguel | USGS | Mar |
| Ute Reservoir fishing report | Reservoir | Quay | USGS | Mar |
| Abiquiu Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Rio Arriba | modeled | May |
| Cochiti Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Sandoval | USGS | Apr |
| Bluewater Lake fishing report | Reservoir | Cibola | modeled | Apr |
| Rio Grande fishing report | River | Taos | USGS | Apr |
| Cimarron River fishing report | River | Colfax | USGS | Oct |
| Eagle Nest Lake fishing report | Lake | Colfax | modeled | Apr |
New Mexico pairs one world-class tailwater with a desert-reservoir tradition: the San Juan below Navajo Dam holds thousands of large, dry-fly-sipping rainbows in four miles of quality water (a pilgrimage river by any measure), while Elephant Butte's stripers and white bass define warm-water fishing in the state. Between them: the Gila's wild trout in wilderness canyons, Rio Grande cutthroat restoration in the high country, and stocked winter trout ponds across the desert cities.
Winter: the San Juan at its technical best: midges, 6X and heavy fish in low, clear flows. Spring: Butte's stripers wake with the shad, wild-turkey weather in the trout canyons. Summer: monsoon-season caution on the small streams, dawn boils on the reservoirs. Fall: the San Juan's baetis, gold cottonwoods on the Rio Grande, and the year's most comfortable desert fishing.
Late spring through fall at first light, whenever shad school shallow: coves and channel edges erupt, and anything silver thrown into the splash gets eaten.