Jemez Fishing News and Tips – June 15, 2025

These notes on Jemez Mountains fishing are excerpted After the Thunder newspaper published in Jemez Springs.

The last two weeks (6/1 -6/15) Jemez fish stockings are shown in the table below. The total number of Triploid (sterile) Rainbow trout stocked in the Jemez this period was 5,271, most of which went to Fenton Lake. Stockings will start to wane as air and water temperatures warm – Fenton Lake and the Rio Cebolla are typically stocked longer than our other waters. Please continue to knock down tourist dams that increase water temperature and deposit silt that kills fish food. Our stream flows increased to 16 – 20 cfs due to recent rains and this will help our streams as we await the monsoon. 

Fishing at Fenton Lake has been good with large trout stockings. Bait, flies, jigs and spinners have all been producing fish. The Rio Cebolla should fish well through June – it’s often overlooked because of its small size and abundance of streamside vegetation. A Cebolla tactic that works for all fishing styles is to feed (not cast) line downstream with lightweight flies, spinners, or bait, stopping periodically to make the bait rise to avoid snags, then slowly retrieving upstream. The Cebolla is one of our most fertile streams, and the Fenton Lake State Perk section has both stocked rainbows and wild brown trout (it’s the nursery for Fenton’s brown trout).

Fishing for wild brown trout continues to be good in the Guadalupe, middle San Antonio, East Fork, VCNP, and smaller streams like the Rio Puerco (east) and the Rito Penas Negras. The golden stonefly hatch is over, and the salmon fly hatch will be over soon. Caddis and mayflies will be the most important trout food insects for the next 2 – 3 months. Streamers and spinners will still take fish – particularly early and late in the day. My go-to fly rig at this time of year is a caddis dry with an emerger on a dropper off the dry fly hook of about 15 – 18 inches. If they are taking the dry fly well, I cut off the dropper. Some  brown trout streams suffer low water conditions in the summer – e.g., the Rio de Las Vacas. Please return fish quickly in low water, and if the surface temperature is over 65 degrees consider fishing another stream – small digital thermometers are inexpensive and easy  to use. I fished the middle Rio San Antonio (Rincon to La Cueva Picnic Area and the ½ mile section above NM 126) recently in both stocked and wild fish sections – both fished well. Caddis dries ruled in the brown trout zones, and deep nymphs worked in the stocked areas. Tight lines!