New Mexico has the distinction of being the Southernmost geography to be stocked with the Hybrid Northern Pike/Muskellunge strain known as Tiger Muskies. These sterile fish were planted in Bluewater and Quemado lakes in 2003 to combat a coarse fish invasion, as Goldfish had been released in both bodies of water which, after a few years ended up looking like this:
As you can guess this is bad, so NMDGF was faced with a few unsavory options which included poisoning the lakes or draining the impoundments to fix the issue of the Goldfish, thankfully some guy thought "Why not just throw in the biggest, scariest looking toothy fish we can find?". That decision was the one that made it through and as of this time last year approximately 290,000 have been released into Bluewater and Quemado making them both scary to take a dip in and a very exciting fishing opportunity for New Mexico.
Matt Pelletier, Fishenchantment.com
After bothering my boss for a year with stories of giant razor mouthed creatures with worse attitudes than his, Eric broke down;
"SHUT UP, I'll go ok?! JUST....SHHH!"
Success, I am nothing if not persistent.
Being the uncouth consumer of StarWars cannon that he is, he of course lacked a rod...and license... and literally any experience fishing. This was going to be a long day, after throwing extra gear in my bag for the charity case partner and picking him up to get a day license we made our way towards Bluewater. It's quite a distance from Albuquerque with a busted radio listening through an Iron Maiden CD about 6 times through, a few jokes about leaving the boss stranded at the lake and him pointedly reminding me of numbers like 1911, .45, 24 rounds, so on and so forth. We ended up in Bluewater Village, the GPS was insistent that we had arrived, the local Postman insisted there was no lake here, and I was sure I may soon have a mutiny on my hands upon my return to the car. GPS lies, go PAST Bluewater Village and take the Prewitt exit if traveling from ABQ. Once arrived there was a brief crash course in rigging a spinning rod, why it was important to use a wire leader and a unwelcome invitation to put a sensitive piece of anatomy near the fishes mouth when I commented on his liberal use of sunscreen.
Also, the name of the lake is truly misleading, the water was anything but blue
After getting the gear lined out Eric and I headed down towards the dam from the east boat ramp where we met a delightfully ancient man with a large stick bait on his way back in who said he had one hookup from shore at about 0730 and a few follows from then to 1130 when we had shown up, I should have correctly interpreted this as what it was; a low number day, instead I was relieved and excited that there were in fact fish here. From where we encountered this wise wizard archetype a rocky point extends from the campground above into the water near the dam on the east side of the lake with close parking available at the boat ramp. Now an unusual and fortuitous instance would often repeat itself; when a boat would come by at speed before approaching the buoys the wake would reach us at shore and about 30 feet out would cause largish fish to roll near the surface giving us targets to sight cast to. As this is normally the only indication of fish position and we being without any kind of watercraft this series of events could be considered a God-send, if you believe in that kind of thing.
At the onset of our little excursion I had repeatedly told Eric to start with short pitches to submerged structure and from there cast further and further out, because even skinny water can hold a decent fish. I promptly forgot my own advice when fish jumped further out. As such when I was walking along the shore I ended up spooking several fish taking residence among waterlogged tumbleweeds at a depth I could have reached out and grabbed by hand without getting wet. I am sometimes an idiot.
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| Follow the rod tip down, there was a fish here |
After a time it became imperative I contact my wife, else risk losing future privileges. This served the dual purpose of leaving Eric at the waterfront in order to let him stew over my prior abandonment comments on the way in. Also there is no cell coverage, the Rangers wont let you use the land line at the office, and the only place high enough to get some decent bars is the hill 5 miles away. At my return Eric insisted he was never concerned as I had left him with my custom rod, but the poor man did look rather put out all the same.
At the end of a fruitless expedition we packed out and mentally prepared ourselves for another couple of hours of subconsciously memorizing Two Minutes to Midnight. The monotony was broken up by a stop at Dairy Queen for unsupervised man food, DQ has fallen prey to the autumn mania of adding pumpkin to every God damned concoction known to man. Unfortunately their interpretation of a Pumpkin Spiced Blizzard is to scoop half a can of unsweetened pumpkin pie mix into vanilla ice cream with liberal addition of crushed graham crackers and mix almost evenly. This is a public service announcement; Please give it a miss, its horrific.
