Red River, New Mexico

Upper river above town

Above the town of Red River the river runs small and fast along NM-578 toward its headwaters under Wheeler Peak, with wild browns and a few brook trout in pocket water that fishes best from mid July through September after runoff. Pressure is light once you are past the last cabins.

Town of Red River

Through the ski town the river is stocked heavily with rainbows and fished hard from the parks and Main Street bridges, and a short reach from the Goose Creek confluence 1.1 miles upstream to the Carson National Forest boundary is Green Chile water: two trout, single barbless artificials. The town water fishes May through October and freezes hard in winter.

Below town to Questa

Between Red River and Questa the river follows NM-38 through a canyon that sees far less pressure than the town water or the lower river. The USGS gauge near Questa reads this stretch before the river reaches the Red River fish hatchery on the west side of Questa.

Lower canyon to the Rio Grande

From the hatchery, the easiest access, the Red drops four to five miles through a spring-fed canyon of pocket water and plunge pools to the Rio Grande inside the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, reached by trails that descend 600 feet or more from the Wild Rivers rim. This is the fly water: wild browns all year and, in late winter and early spring, cuttbows that run up from the Rio Grande. The gauge this page reads sits at the top of the reach below the hatchery.

Brown trout

Wild browns are the majority fish everywhere below town and the whole story in the lower canyon, where they are not picky in the fast water but hold tight to structure. Baetis from January into March, small stoneflies and caddis in early summer and fall caddis and baetis are the calendar, and the lower canyon fishes best from September into mid April before runoff.

Rainbow trout

Rainbows in the town water are hatchery fish from the Red River hatchery, the state's largest, and they are the reason families fish the parks. Cuttbows, rainbow and cutthroat hybrids from the Rio Grande, are the lower canyon's winter and spring bonus.

Season and regulations

The Red is open all year, and springs keep the lower canyon fishable in winter when the town water is frozen. No local shop publishes a cfs window for this river, so this page uses 30 to 90 cfs, the base-flow band the USGS gauge below the hatchery has run outside of runoff over its record, which matches the low, clear conditions guides describe as prime; runoff in late April through June pushes it past 150 cfs.

The Green Chile reach in town (Goose Creek confluence to the Carson National Forest boundary) is limited to two trout on single barbless artificials; the rest of the river carries the statewide limit of 5 trout, no more than 2 of them cutthroat. Read the Special Trout Waters pages of the current NMDGF booklet before you fish either reach.