Winter temperatures along the Rio Peqasco, which meanders about 5,500 feet above sea level, often climb into the high 50s and low 60s.

As good as it looks

Under a cold, starry night this past winter, the bonfire outside our riverside tent-cabins danced while we shot the bull and drained some cold beers. When we ran out of stories, we retreated to the warmth of our tents. And before long, lies about the day's catches and past catches began flowing like the spring creek just yards away.

We fished for a few hours the last morning. Two denizens of the Hat Pool kept me guessing, refusing every pattern, every good drift, leaving me reliant on my humility. They rose to my presentations, nosed them, broadsided them, and in the end, laughed at my attempts.

If only I'd been there two weeks prior when the hoppers were hatching. Or if I could be on the water later in the season, on an Indian summer day in winter, with hatches aplenty. I could catch those leviathans then.

A Rhythmic River

Maybe that's the romance of this spring creek. If it were easy, if it weren't so harshly beautiful, if more anglers fished it, then I might not go back.

Stalking a rising trout

There is a certain comfortable rhythm about the Rio Peqasco, about its hatches.

On fall mornings, it's a bit chilly, and we fish with small baetis nymphs, warming our hands in our pockets. The day heats up and we swing streamers through deep holes, and prospect through likely lies with a dry and nymph dropper. By late afternoon, the caddis have started coming off and the trout fly out of the water after emergers.

But, come the fall, I'll find myself daydreaming at my desk and I'll be standing on the green banks, delicately dropping a size 22 Baetis on Bonefish Flats, and hooking up with the largest trout anyone in nearby Mayhill or Cloudcroft has ever seen.

And this time, I'm gonna land him.