The upper Pecos, tumbling out of the Sangre de Cristo high country above Santa Fe, is northern New Mexico's most-loved trout freestone — close enough to the city to fill the campgrounds, big enough to give everyone room. Browns and rainbows through the canyon water, and native Rio Grande cutthroat hanging on in the cold tributaries, which are a conservation story worth treating gently. It's an honest dry-dropper river once the spring snowmelt clears, with attractors and small nymphs doing most of the work. The cautions are seasonal and real: it runs low and warm in high summer, the monsoon can colour it brown in an afternoon, and wildfire and forest closures have shaped the watershed in recent years. Fish it in early summer and autumn for the best of it.

• Mixed

• Aquatic life: Impaired