Fly Fishing in Taos New Mexico with High Mountain Angler

Helicopters thumping in the distance. Military vehicles, loaded with reinforcements, thundering down the road. Choking smoke drifting through the town. Sirens filling the air. Rumbling tanker wagons. Saigon in '68? Mogadishu in '93? Baghdad this past spring? Heck no! Taos in July. A forest fire was chewing away the slopes near the famed Taos Pueblo, threatening the tribal water supply. Platoons of fire fighting "hotshots" were rushing into the area from several states. Standing outside the door to the inn, flyfishing gear at my feet, waiting for my guide the show up, I imagined Robert Duval in Apocalypse Now, sporting tasseled cavalry hat and bellowing, " I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" with strands of Ride of the Valkyries as background music.
The Encebado Fire, ignited by lightning, had managed to converge with Tina's and my long laid plans to visit Northern New Mexico. It was scaring hoards of tourists away from town. Dinner reservations were a snap. When Manny Sandoval, my guide, arrived that morning he assured me the fire would not interfere with our plans to pursue the native and increasingly rare Rio Grande Cutthroats found in the Rio Costilla, a small mountain tailwater about one hour north of Taos in Carson National Forest. To John Gierach, who confesses a "soft spot" for the species, the cutthroat epitomizes the frontier spirit: "Cutthroats have an aura about them of being 'out there' where the wind blows free, where men are men, and all the rest of that Western movie crap." Despite such bluster, the strain of fish I was after has its problems. "During the 20th Century, a 'one-two' punch was dealt the Rio Grande cutthroat trout: one being habitat degradation, the other being the introduction of other trout species, including rainbow trout, into its ecosystem," states a brochure from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, which adds, "Recovery from these dual blows remains uncertain." the department is actively trying to preserve this treasured fish and the Rio Costilla is off limits during spring spawning season.
Manny and I drove out of town past sage brush prairie, climbing gradually into pinon and juniper hills and over a washboard dirt road which lead us through steep canyon walls (that I suspect inspired the same of the stream), a few stray cattle munching away beside the road, into a 9000 foot valley whose slopes were covered with large strands of ponderosa broken by alpine meadows, the latter frequented by elk and the occasional black bear. The stream is about ten to fifteen feet wide and meanders through a flood plain in the green valley. White and yellow meadow flowers were in bloom. The sky was brilliant blue with a few white cumulus clouds bumping the eastern peaks. Patches of snow topped the moutains on the Colorado border. Only a few anglers were in the valley, a couple of them with guides. I've fished in worse places.
Manny, born and raised in Taos, rigged my rod with a floater/dropper combination-a stimulator with a suspended Gordito (little fatty), a nymph creation of his own design that has a thick thorax, in imitiation of the yellow stoneflies that inhabit the stream. "These are the fastest fish in the West," he warned. "Great," I thought to myself, "my sixty year old arm against a posse of fast-draw cutthroats."
At every bend in the stream Manny had me casting to the seam between the bubbly water and the still. Having soon landed two small cutthroats, a nice-sized male the seized the Gordito and, aflter netting it, Manny displayed the amazing orange streaks on it's undersides and asked if I wanted a picture. (I forgot to bring a camera). Before lunch I caught a few more, including a rainbow and a cutbow, and had a lot of misses as the fish struck with blazing speed.
After a sandwich on the tailgate of his truck we switched to a Madame X with a Copper John dropper and sauntered off to the OK Corral once again. I picked up and released about seven more fish, had many refusals, and got pretty tired working under Manny's direction. Lots of bank walking and much casting - move two feet and cast, two more feet and cast -- don't bother drifting the fly past your last position the fish have already seen you. Move and cast. Again. Again. In the upper part of the stream were series of V-shaped log inprovments made by the Game and Fish people and each pool beneath them seemed to hold trout. At 4 o'clock I took a break and let Manny try my new travel rod, a Father's Day present. He quickly hooked into a couple of fish in the "V" pools. "I love this river," he said to no one in particular. Being handed the rod again, I ended the day nailing a nice rainbow on a last and perfect cast into a deep bend of the stream.
On the drive back to Taos we watched the Encebado Fire. From miles away we could clearly see the dirt scar of a fresh fire break gouged out of the mountain by monster dozers. With long plums of smoke rising over the mountains and helicopters attacking the hotspots, Manny told me tales of other Taos forest fires and the role played by his father, a fire dispatcher, in all of them. My guide mourned the loss of the 100-year-old pinon trees from which, as a boy, he harvested gunny sacks of nuts. Although I had a great day of fly fishing on the Rio Costilla, it was bittersweet to also witness a tragedy played upon the forests of Taos.