Jicarilla Fishing Blog
July 24th, 2025
Folks,
Despite some small respites from the drought we are firmly in hot and dry record setting drought. Lakes such and Stone and Enbom are at record low levels. Mundo is holding its own, but low, and with low water comes increased aquatic vegetation. Catch and release trout fishing is a no go. Catfishing, bass, and bluegill
are the name of the game when the temps are this high. We remain in an open fire ban, and the surrounding National Forests are the same.
Hopefully the rains keep up.
J.
July 8th, 2025
Folks,
Very warm weather, lowering water, and high lake temperatures. Amazingly no fishing reports have been submitted.If you are a catch and release angler it is time to think about cold tailwater fishing.
Just a reminder NO FIRES. Propane cooking only.
J.
June 17th, 2025
Folks,
I'd say the ethical trout catch and release window has passed us until fall. Yesterday morning surface temps at Mundo Lake were 67 degrees. On a positive note I've heard a few very large nice catfish have been caught.
If you are not interested in fishing with 200 kids please avoid Mundo Lake all day on June 25th. The department will be holding its annual Jicarilla WILD Community Outreach and Education event all day at the lake. It is a super cool event with lots of education and conservation minded topics for folks to dig into. If you do plan to fish that day please utilize the east side of the lake for parking as the spillway and campground will be quite busy and Conservation Officers will be directing parking to optimize safety and space for participants and staff.
Mr. Jeffery, my eye in the sky on all things fishing around here has been out there putting folks to shame with the Egans Poacher and a five weight. Just saying.
Enjoy your summer!
J.
June 5th, 2025
Folks,
Quite the exciting weather as of late. Lots of monsoon like behavior. Selling lots of permits but zero reports.
A local young msn Mr. Jeffery Caramillo is offering some angling related services here on the Nation and asked to advetise them here on the blog. We gladly agreed to post his information, we know Mr. Jeffery is a pretty fishy kid and a creative fly tyer.
Support a local small business if you are so inclined:
May 28th, 2025
Folks,
Warmer weather and lots of anglers, but as usual very few reports. Above is a photo from one of our off-duty game wardens. A beautiful, healthy and very clean rainbow trout is about to be released. He would like to remind everyone to be nice and understanding when at the lake, at home, on the internet, or anywhere really.The two anglers I spoke with mentioned fish between 16 and 21" being caught at four or five an hour, dragonflies, damselflies and even mayflies. The bite is going to start slowing down as temperatures rise, day time water temp is right about at 60 degrees. I heard an interesting thing on the internet the other day...
Bluewater Lake (somewhere else in NM, I've never been) has been cranking out some amazing large trout and theweb is full of folks with nice large fish ready for the fryer. The comment that struck me as interesting was " I hope the muskies don't eat them all" from a guy holding a stringer full of beautiful fish tacos all over 3 or 4 pounds each... I would think people eat more of the fish than the muskies ever could, but what a cool looking fishery. One day when the Fish Crew isn't working maybe we need a road trip.
Enjoy your fishing wherever you may be!
J.
May 12th, 2025
JUST A REMINDER THURSDAY MAY 15TH MUNDO LAKE WILL BE INUNDATED WITH YOUTH AND VISITORS!
There will be restrictions on access and parking as well as expected high traffic. Visiting Anglers Use your best judgement on coming to visit if any of this sounds
like something you may not like. There will be a lot of excitement as the WHOLE middle school comes to the lake for a day!
J.
May 5th, 2025
Folks,
A few reports were submitted all indicating great fishing.
Mrs. Carrie submitted a beautiful fish photo and for her efforts will be receiving a 50 dollar gift certificate to our friends at Los Pinos Fly & Tackle.
If you find yourself in need of a tackle, always support a local business if you can!
One a side note if you are hoping for solitude and quiet please do not come to the lake on May 15th. We are hosting a large youth event and will be taking over the west side of Mundo Lake for the majority of the day.
Boat ramp access will be limited if non-existant. If you are still planning on coming despite this warning, please park on the east side of the lake.
J.
May 1st, 2025
Mr. Doug said our reports are not very helpful for anglers planning trips to our lakes. We think fishing is pretty easy and not much information is needed to go fishing. But Mr. Doug, being an above average friendly gentlemen angler, offered to upgrade our reports with his own fishing report, which I have included un-edited below. We disagree that fishing regulations impacted fish size, or that average fish size has increased this year, but we didn't write the report. Of course we don't get to fish as part of our regular duties so it's a little unfair to compare. Be like Mr. Doug, submit a report before you ask for a report!
Fishing Report:
May 28, 2025
I had driven up from Albuquerque to fish Mundo Lake with a flyrod from a float tube. It was certainly not my fault, but someone had hidden my little bag with reels, lines, leaders and the like back in Albuquerque. That meant that when I got to the lake I could not fish. I went into Dulce looking for, and actually found, a good samaritan that lent me a reel loaded with floating fly line and new 5X leader for a few hours. Lucky.
I went back to the lake and was the only one on the water with a float tube or any other water craft. The wind was a significant factor, as it always is, when trying to get where I want to go in a traditional low riding float tube. I fished three hours and had a couple of dozen takes after figuring our where some fish were, for a hookup rate of about eight an hour. Most fish were hooked in about 1-5 feet of water from right next to the weeds to about 35 yards out from the weeds.
The fish were all big, about 17-22 inches. This is much much better than average size that I have encountered in recent years. Good job on amending the regulations.
Never saw a fish on top, so all fishing was subsurface, using common large buck tails such as muddler minnows, cat’s whiskers, or zonkers. The takes were so subtle that they usually could not be felt since I was using ultra slow or no retrieve. Detecting the takes was visual like a slight straightening of the line or perhaps a bit of disturbance out where the fly was located. Once the fish took the fly the scenario changed dramatically. Virtually every fish was jumping high out of the water. The 5X leader was plenty to play and land the fish but I broke off the fly a few times because of the high leaps - would have preferred fishing with 2X or 3X, but I was just grateful to have a a reel and line. I kept my allowed two fish and stopped fishing. All in all, a very fine three hours of fishing.
Doug
April 29th, 2025
Folks,
One report has been submitted. Fishing still sounds pretty good at Mundo. Biting all sorts of things: buggers, sinking flies, and even bait.
The weeds will be coming up as surface temperature at the lake increases, algae is also a concern when the lake gets low. Algae around the edges will become an issue for shore anglers as the season progresses.
Surface temperature at the lake this cool morning was 55 degrees.
Many anglers have been requiring law enforcement to remind them of the rules. They are doing their job, if they didn't find so many violations, they wouldn't be out asking so many questions.
J.
April 16th, 2025
Folks,
A few reports over the weekend include "Best fishing of my 72 years", "Strongest fish anywhere in the west", and "Best lake fishing anywhere in the Rocky Mountains". 75 fish days with average size for 18". Dozens and dozens of trout over 20" and quite a few over 22". "Strong Healthy Fighting Fish". "Excellent Fishing", "Caught fish all day"...
Mr. Jeffery for his consistent and awesome reporting won a Simms Backpack/vest and some assorted goodies this week (Photo below). While Mr. Dave is getting a $100.00 gift card from our friends at Los Pinos Fly & Tackle for writing the most descriptive, extensive, and useful fishing report ever submitted (inthe last decade at least) .
If you don't want to hear about Catch and Release (C&R) angling and the ramblings of the Fish Crew on the subject, please do not read any further and go fishing instead!
Happy fishing wherever you end up!
J.
With the large C&R numbers possible at our little lakes it is important to understand that C&R is not a 100% successful operation, and poor catch and release tactics can end up depleting the resource faster than legal catch and keep anglers without the benefit of getting tasty fish tacos. Every C&R angler you talk to, will tell you with a straight face the years of experience they have and how they are perfect at it, but you'll watch them use undersized tackle, or subpar fish fighting technique, but they will always be able to recite from rote the number of fish caught (usually a really big big tremendous number) and the years of experience they have. This does not change the fact that some percentage of the fish they encounter do not survive the experience. Nor does this fact need to be a critism or slight, instead an oppurtunity to do better, to improve their craft and skill. One who has no improvement left to make must indeed be perfect?
Now I know we are just a random Fish Crew and we will never match the crafty angler we are chatting, but...The crafty angler does not have to trust us, they could look to any trusted resource on the topic to find statements like "Use the heaviest practical tackle" "Don't fish as water temperatures exceed 68 degrees", "Do you need to catch a 100 and risk a 10% post release mortality, or could you satisfy your day with 20?".
As I sat and watched the osprey follow the tubes around the lake I couldn't help but wonder if he wouldn't be so well fed if there were not 100 recently released fish to pick off as they try to recover...How more likely is a recently released fish to be predated? If 4x increases your catch over 3x, then how in the world do people consistently outfish flies with 50lbs test snelled to a size egg bait hook covered in a golf ball rainbow play dough? If you are breaking rods on 3x, maybe you hit it with a conehead on that single errand cast you made last year, or maybe the breaking strength of a normal 5 weight blank is lower than the tippet? Why is it where strong 20 plus inch trout are often captured 6, 7 and even 8 weights are used (Alaska, patagonia, New Zealand...The Jicarilla), you know, places where they don't measure the trout in inches but in pounds or kilograms. How does your average spinner or spoon angler catch fish after fish with 15 or 20 pound tests?
We know the readers of the blog are probably well aware of these principles and ethical debates, heck, they probably know more about it than we do. Many anglers have feelings about the recent changes to bag limits but have not considered their impact on a very finite resource. As resources (not only here) but through the public domain see increased pressure, all users are going to have to deal with these types of thoughts and at least attempt to grapple with their approach to the ramifications.
Some groups like NOAA, Fly Fisheries International, Trout Unlimited, and others have posted some excellent and thought provoking content on the subject. I've put some snippets of that below:
It is always fun to wade into the deep end, the grey area filling the triangle of ethics, morals, and law around fishing. What is fair chase and sportsmans conduct? Thank goodness if you just read the proclamation and follow the laws you're good.
J.