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Axie Navas, director of New Mexico’s Outdoor Recreation Division, with a brown trout in the Rio Grande Gorge’s Middle Box.
Earlier this month, I caught a brown trout in the Middle Box of the Rio Grande Gorge.
The small silvery, speckled fish was not particularly notable – browns especially are common in this stretch of the Rio, part of one of the best cold-water fisheries in the U.S. – other than marking a few personal firsts. I’ve never fly-fished, I’d never scrambled down to that slice of the gorge, and I’d certainly never caught a trout. Ecstatic doesn’t begin to describe it.