The Other San Juan
While the bulk of what we do here at About Trout happens on the Quality Waters, we wanted to shed some light on another section of the river, “The Quantity Waters”. Also referred to as the bait water, the stretch of river from Crusher hole to the Village boat ramp is often overlooked by fly anglers. Anglers are allowed to harvest trout in this section and fly anglers are definitely in the minority. With that being said, most of the bait fishing and harvesting happens in a couple concentrated spots (the ones closest to parking lots) leaving the vast majority of this stretch open for exploration.
The “quantity water” is heavily stocked but also supports a healthy population of wild brown trout. This is a section of river we guide if we have newer anglers, kids, or want to work with someone on a particular skill. Because of the numbers of fish, this section of river offers an excellent class room, compressing a weeks worth of fishing into a few hours. This middle section of river also offers an escape from the crowds up top in the quality water and often you can enjoy a morning down river and return to the QW to find less anglers than when you started.
We really enjoy the charter and features of this part of the river as well. The water moves more swiftly and there are some beautiful riffles and runs. This is a great section of river to euro. nymph and there are a few sneaky spots to mess around with trout spey as well. The quantity water also has some excellent dry fly fishing. This past fall the hatches were more plentiful than up in the QW and when we had anglers who wanted to dry fly fish we brought them down low.
If you want a map of the area check it out here
The fishing and patterns are pretty straight forward and here is a list of flies if you decide to go check it out. You’ll notice they’re way bigger than the stuff we’re fishing up top although midge rigs certainly do some damage. Flies are available from our friends at Los Pinos Fly Shop as well as Float and Fish.
Flies:
- Jig Egg #12
- Bead Head Pheasant Tail #16
- Mop Fly #12
- San Juan Worm, Red, Pink, Orange #12
- Zebra Midge, Black, Grey #18-22
- Scuds, Gray, Olive #16-20
- Parachute Adams #16-20
- Fat Albert #12
- Joes Hopper #12
- Sculpzilla #10
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