RED RISING
Taylor Streit still has a hard time with the Red River. He grumbles as he walks along its banks in the last stretch before it joins the Rio Grande, deep in a black-walled gorge in northern New Mexico. It’s four miles to the confluence, but between hopping rocks, dodging branches, and keeping an eye out for mountain lions and rattlesnakes, it hikes more like eight. Taylor has guided all over the world, but says the rivers and streams here still rank among his favorites. In the Taos Fly Shop, which Taylor started and his son Nick now runs, a glossy 24-inch cutbow—a hybrid of the native Rio Grande cutthroat trout and introduced rainbow trout that pairs those freckled sage sides with a prominent red streak at its gills—hangs on the wall, looking over the quick-dry pants and “Damn right I fish like a girl” t-shirts. That fish came from the Red, as did stories about the battle—lunging under downed trees while fighting a fast-running trout without breaking it off. It’s a wild river, and it made for wild fishing. But the river’s been broken for a long time.
“You sound like you’re fibbing when you say it was the best trout fishing ever, you know?” Taylor says. “I mean, we say that all the time. But I think in this case it really was.”
When I prod him for fishing stories about the Red, he asks, “Did you read my book?” referring me to Man versus Fish: The Fly Fisherman’s Eternal Struggle. He doesn’t really want to talk about what the fishing was, or what it is now.
“When you talk to him, you’ll see he’s still brokenhearted and pissed off
