The fishing on the San Juan, in a word, sucked this time around, at least for me. My buddies Rick and Jeff didn’t do much better, but they did manage to catch a few. I got skunked!

Now, that doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen, so I took it all philosophically. That’s not to say I didn’t care whether I caught any fish or not, its just that I’ve caught plenty on the San Juan, so a few more doesn’t make it or break it for me.

To be fair though, the water was pretty murky. I’d say visibility was right around 12 inches, maybe a bit better. The fish weren’t very interested in the normal small flies you’d use there. No, the fish they caught were more interested in chamois leeches in a sort of burnt orange color, fished on the bottom in faster moving water.

There has been quite a bit of rain in the area, and that certainly is contributing to the off color of the river, but if you go up to the top of the dam and look at the lake, you’ll see what the issue is. The lake is downright muddy, so it doesn’t look like the river will clear anytime soon. In fact, we heard that USBR is planning a 5000cfs flush again this year that will go 60 to 90 days, probably starting in mid-May. So, that means the fishing won’t really be good again until fall.

We hit a weather window just right however. On the drive up on 2/19, we were in rain off and on the entire trip. Monday dawned clear as did Tuesday. Wednesday had a bit of thin cloud cover. The high temperatures each day were right around 60°, so it was quite pleasant out on the water.

Next trips are a day on Silver Creek in Arizona near the end of March and then a few days fishing the surf near San Diego in mid-April. And in mid to late May is a trip to the Ruby Lake NWR in Nevada. Let me know if you are interested in any of these trips.