The San Juan below Navajo Dam is one of the great trout tailwaters in North America, and it earns the reputation honestly: a cold, nutrient-rich river in high-desert country that holds an astonishing density of big, well-fed rainbows and browns. The famous water is the special-regulation reach immediately below the dam — technical, crowded, and brilliant, fished with tiny midges and Baetis on long leaders and finer tippet than feels reasonable. It's a place where two anglers stand in the same run and one catches everything because they're a size and a half-foot of drift better. Wade or float; nymph the runs, or wait for the Baetis and fish the dries to noses. Below the special water the rules ease and the fishing gets more general. A tailwater through and through — read the release, not the weather.
The San Juan below Navajo Dam is proof that a tailwater can make trout where the desert never intended any. Cold, clear, sediment-free water comes off the bottom of the reservoir at a constant forty-five degrees year-round, and in the four-odd miles of Quality Waters below the dam it grows rainbows and browns in numbers that seem faintly unreasonable for high-desert New Mexico. The river runs through an open valley of sandstone, siltstone and shale — sagebrush country, big sky — the trout holding in braided channels and the famous glassy flats where they sip midges by the thousand. The bed is gravel and cobble, the water low and even because the dam says so. Wading is comfortable on firm footing. The fish are many, large, and have seen every fly in the box twice — bring small.
Wading: Glassy flats over very wary fish
- Mixed
- Unconfined
- Pool riffle