When I moved out to New Mexico, I was lucky enough to meet Tim Pinnow through the FF@ listserv. Tim had also relocated to the land of maņana from the midwest, and also shared my passion for backcountry fishing expeditions. Last summer we were able to take a backpacking trip and had such a good time, we decided that we should do it every year. This year we decided on the Los Piņos river in the Weimenuche Wilderness area of the San Juan mountains.

For Scenery, frankly it doesn't matter where you go in the San Juan mountains, it is spectacular. The volcanic peaks are some of the youngest in the rocky mountains. The jagged faces reflect and soak up light with astounding brilliance. The mountains there are quite a contrast to the worn fault block peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range around my home town of Santa Fe, which are some of the oldest in the rockies.

This trek was a rather gentle one. The trailhead sits at around 8,000 feet, and our destination was at 9,000 feet. We were headed for an area called "Willow Park" that starts about 9 miles in and runs up to about 11 miles. Not a lot of up and down on this trail, so the hike in was pretty much a straight forward climb. The trail starts along private property and skirts a couple horse ranches, well away from the river. At the three mile mark, it rejoins the river and crosses into the Weimenuche Wilderness.

We started a little later than we hoped, and by 8 o'clock in the evening, we had passed by the Emerald Lake trail and called it a night about 7 miles in. Emerald Lake is the primary destination for hikers and horsepackers on this trail. Since we were heading elsewhere, we wouldn't see many people from here on out. Thursday morning after a quick breakfast, we hit the trail again, and were setting up our new camp in Willow Park by 10 a.m.

Our campsite was across the valley floor from where Falls Creek tumbled off the opposing ridge line. The two sets of falls which gobbled up about 500 feet of vertical wall gave us both an visual and audio backdrop for our stay.

Fish were rising everywhere on the river right in front of our campsite, so we knew we were in for some serious catching. After setting up camp, we both hurriedly geared up and jumped into the river. The first fish I took was a brown, which kind of surprised me. The limited amount of literature I had about this stream said to expect a mix of brook trout and cutthroats. Well, I was really surprised when the next 5 fish were also browns. The last of which I knocked on the head and kept for lunch.

It turns out we picked out a pretty good place to stay. The meadow water downstream offered some challenging fish, and the pocket water upstream, a different set of challenges. Water temps were beautiful allowing for wet wading. From the taste of the bottle of Fat Tire Amber Ale I lugged in, I'd guess the water temp was running in the 50-55 degree range.

This first night, I finally hooked and landed an 11" cutthroat. I thought it would be of some stocked variety, but it was fully a Colorado River cutthroat. Add another fish to the life list.

This section is rather bizarre. Even though there was plenty of cover near the banks, the browns were holding in the riffle water well away from the banks. The cutthroat I caught was out of one of the deepest holes. Exactly the opposite of what I would expect.

Fishing here was easy. For the most part, I used only three patterns - a House & Lot Variant, an Adams, and a Hair Wing Yellow Sallie. I was really excited to be fishing dry flies. Most of the freestone and pocket water streams around here require you to get deep if you want to catch fish.

I think I caught more fish on dry flies in the four days of fishing here than I have over the whole other 4 years I've been out here. For the most part, the fish were all in the 10 to 16 inch range.

Afternoon thunderstorms helped to keep the temperatures down. When I returned to civilization, I learned that most of the southwest was suffering through a heat wave, but we had no idea while we were there. In fact, we both had to drag out the fleece jacket a couple evenings to stay warm.

We decided to break the hike out into two parts and on Saturday afternoon moved downstream about 5 miles. Hail pelted us on the hike down, but cleared by the time we set up our new camp about a mile downstream of Emerald Creek. The fishing in this section was definitely sparser. It was apparent from the empty charcoal bag and the used diapers left behind that more people fished this section (who the hell brings a baby 5 miles into the wilderness?).

Even though there was much more water here, the river here was broken into several braids that still made wet wading pretty manageable. After dinner, we both headed out to do some fishing. There were a lot of mayflies and caddisflies coming off, but no fish rising. I worked up a 50 yard long riffle section with no luck. After that I decided to do a little exploring. Walking the bank upstream, I peered through a small channel and spied a hole on the far side of the river. I stumbled over there, and noticed a couple fish rising to some ovipositing mayflies. I put on a red quill, and immediately put down two fish in the hole. Since there were no more fish rising, I decided to cast along a downed tree on the far bank. First cast - smack! I brought a very fat 15" brown to hand after a couple minute fight. This was the first brown that was where I expected it to be, and tied for the largest fish of the trip in length and was certainly the heaviest fish. Darkness was now falling, and not knowing the stream at all, I reeled in and headed back to camp.

Sunday morning, we fished again. I saw no fish and somehow caught a 14" rainbow out of a deeper hole.

After fishing, we hiked out, apparently against the grain. There was a continuous stream of winded hikers heading in on the lower three miles of the trail. When we got to the trailhead, the reason became clear. A church bus from Texas had spewed it's contents onto the trail.

My suggestion would be if you are going to hike this trail, go in a ways. The first 5 miles seemed crowded with day trippers and weaker hikers. From mile 6-8, the river runs through some pretty steep canyon. You can fish it, but you're going to be doing some serious boulder hopping. After that it levels out to a more fishable area.