NM Trout Conclave - 2023

New Mexico Trout held it's 2023 Trout Conclave this weekend. I haven't attended one of these since before the COVID hunker down years. It's always a fun event to attend and I'm happy to get back to some of the normal activities of life again. I've always walked away from these kind of meetings learning some new techniques in fly fishing. The speakers, Devin Olson and Noah Parker were very informative on fishing techniques, fly tying, and trout streams here in New Mexico and Colorado.

On the fun side of these events, I've taken home some nice gear from the conclave's raffles through the years. I've won a bamboo rod each year for two years running. Some fly lines. One year, I won a fishing trip up on the Holy Waters, underneath Eagle Nest Lake, that included a stream side cabin for two nights and three days of fishing. My buddy Steve came up from Tucson to join me on that freebie trip...we tied that trip to a few more days of fishing several more streams up in the Taos area. This year, I didn't participate in the raffles because the price of a blue ticket went up from $5 to $20 per ticket...yeah, I took a pass this year.

Just guessing, the conclave ran about 25% in view of attendance from what I experienced in previous years. Not sure why they picked this weekend? The conclave was competing with the New Mexico Outdoor Hunting & Fishing Show in Albuquerque and the Denver Fly Fishing Show. However, it was still fun to see the conclave back up and running again.

It's now mid-February and still cold with lots of snow up on the mountains, so it will be interesting to see how the river flows react this spring. My hopes are spring runoff ends early and we get plenty of days to fish before the monsoons start jacking up the rivers. It would sure be nice if we could get a break weather wise this year.