Fly Fishing Cimarron River - Ute Park

Fly fishing Cimarron River from the first US-64 bridge below Tolby Campground down to Ute Park puts you in Cimarron Canyon proper: seven miles of tumbling pocket water squeezed between the granite Palisades Sills and the ponderosa slopes of Cimarron Canyon State Park. The river here is still a tailwater, fed by the irrigation release from Eagle Nest Dam a few miles upstream, but it has picked up Tolby Creek, Clear Creek and a string of side canyons and has a bigger, rougher feel than the beaver-pond water near the dam. Boulders the size of cars break the current into plunge pools, slots and short glides, the gradient runs about 75 feet per mile, and the water drops from roughly 7,960 feet at the upper bridge to 7,420 feet at the state park boundary.

Wild brown trout dominate, averaging 10 to 14 inches, and they live in the pockets and pool heads where the broken water hides them from the highway traffic and the anglers who follow it. Rainbow trout are stocked around the campgrounds and picnic areas and take a fly readily, so a day here usually mixes chunky hatchery rainbows with wild browns that have earned their spots. The upper mile or two below the boundary bridge fishes much like the Tolby reach, but the character changes at the Palisades, where the canyon walls rear up and the river becomes a staircase of boulder gardens, and it opens again toward Maverick and Ponderosa campgrounds near Ute Park, where longer runs and gravel tailouts appear.

Because the river is regulated, the season follows the dam rather than the snowpack. Flows settle into a fishable 15 to 60 cfs at the USGS 07206000 gage once the release opens in spring and hold there until the dam closes in mid-October, which makes this canyon a dependable option while nearby freestone rivers are high with runoff. Midges hatch year-round, spring brings blue-winged olives, ginger duns and the first caddis, early summer belongs to golden stoneflies, little yellow stones and pale morning duns, midsummer adds pale evening duns and heavy caddis evenings, late summer brings trico mornings and hoppers, ants and beetles along the brushy banks, and fall turns back to olives and streamers. Scuds and small nymphs drifted deep through the plunge pools produce when nothing is on top.

A 7.5- to 8.5-foot rod in a 3- or 4-weight, a short leader and a dry-dropper or tight-line nymph rig cover most of the water. Access is simple: US-64 runs the length of the canyon with Horseshoe Mine and Perryville day-use areas, Blackjack Campground, the Palisades Picnic Area, and Maverick and Ponderosa campgrounds spaced along the reach, plus dozens of highway pullouts. A state park day-use fee or annual pass is required. The tiny community of Ute Park sits at the downstream boundary, the town of Cimarron with lodging and food is 12 miles east, Eagle Nest is a short drive west, and Albuquerque International Sunport is about three hours away.