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Conchas Lake New Mexico: Bass, Walleye, Crappie Fishing & Camping

Conchas Lake New Mexico: Bass Fishing, Walleye, Crappie and the Wide-Open Country Near Tucumcari. There's something about a big reservoir in the middle of northeastern New Mexico that brings back memories of my years guiding bass fishermen and competing in tournaments across Texas.A rocky point dropping into deep water.A submerged channel winding through a sheltered cove.A morning breeze putting just enough ripple on the surface to make a smallmouth bass forget his manners.And somewhere beneath that water, a largemouth bass waiting beside a rock pile for an easy meal.That's the sort of country I think about when somebody mentions Conchas Lake New Mexico.Conchas isn't one of those little alpine lakes tucked beneath snow-covered peaks in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It's a sprawling warmwater reservoir surrounded by sandstone bluffs, rolling grasslands, juniper-covered hills and the enormous skies of northeastern New Mexico.It's also one of those places that reminds me how wonderfully diverse our adopted home state really is.Paulette and I spent seventeen years living at Casa Oso, our log home above Angel Fire. We became accustomed to elk wandering through the forest, summer thunderstorms building over Wheeler Peak and mornings when the mountain air was cool enough to make you reach for a jacket in July.Drive east toward Tucumcari, however, and New Mexico changes its personality.The mountains gradually give way to plains.Ponderosa forests surrender to grassland and juniper.And the fishing changes from trout to largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, crappie, walleye and catfish.That's what makes Conchas Lake so interesting.It offers the sort of warmwater fishing I spent much of my life enjoying, surrounded by scenery that is unmistakably New Mexican.

New Mexico · 29d