The Animas is Durango's river, a snowmelt freestone that runs right through the middle of town and somehow stays a genuinely good brown-and-rainbow fishery while it does. The Gold Medal water between Lightner Creek and Rivera Crossing is flies-and-lures, urban and accessible and surprisingly productive. Runoff owns it in May and June, and the summer monsoon can turn it off-color in an afternoon; the autumn streamer-and-BWO window is the quiet gem. There's an old mining-and-water-quality story upstream that's worth a careful word and not a scare campaign. This is also the gateway to the San Juan high country, if you've got the legs for alpine cutthroat.
- Mixed
