They looked like little bass,” he recalls. “We didn’t think they would be very big, but overnight they had grown to 12 inches and were fat. In 1962 the dam was completed and Abe was one of the first on the water, rod in hand, as he and his friend caught some of the first trout from the new tailwater. Help was enlisted from the extended Chavez family of aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins, and children who worked shifts around the clock to feed the workers, and the business began to grow. There were lean times in the early days, but the young couple who had decided to open in the middle of nowhere, caught a big break when Abe’s wife Patsy became the first Postmaster of the newly created Post Office and the dam’s 700 workers started showing up to collect their mail. 64, then opened up shop with a view of two-lane blacktop and nothing else but empty fields of sage and rabbit brush- just eighteen days after the first truck made its maiden voyage with the beginning of 26 million tons of earth and stone that would become the dam and form the river.Īs one might imagine, the place wasn’t an instant success as far as recreational fishing destinations go- there was no fishing yet because of the construction, and it was well off the beaten path. They’ll tell you that, because that is the San Juan as most people know it- not the one from ’58 when Abe Chavez borrowed $3,000 from his aunt to buy an old, outdated building from the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and have it trucked up U.S.
FISH HEADS SAN JUAN RIVER LODGE FULL
They may tell you about the parking lots full of rental cars and others with out-of-state plates with the latest innovative fly rods and reels tucked under the windshields or stashed away in the fancy rod lockers overhead, the ones that seem to be all the rage these days. They might describe the parade of expensive, fiberglass drift boats, rumbling down through the center of town each morning and afternoon, or they may tell you about any number of bed and breakfasts, lodges, and retirement homes that seem to sprout up like the surrounding chamisa each year. If you mention the San Juan in any fly fishing circle nowadays, most folks will conjure up for you an image of a small town in Northern New Mexico with its three fly shops and restaurants, all within a stone’s throw from one another. His is a story that began with the love of a river that he fished as a boy with his father, and a passion for the sport that still endures today. Abe Chavez, apparently, understood the phrase, “If you build it, they will come,” long before it was popularized in the movies.
History, in this case, seems to bear out the former. To build a fly and tackle shop in the middle of the desert next to a silt-laden river with only catfish and suckers, when there isn’t even a town yet, requires you to either be a true visionary or to have had a complete loss of your mental faculties. In a world where small businesses fail at the rate of twenty percent in their first year, fifty percent after five, and only one- third make it to their tenth anniversary, you have to wonder why anyone would want to take the risk in the first place. While, sometimes a slow waltz, occasionally a fandango, a jitterbug, or even a two-step- through it all, he seems to have successfully mastered the art of never letting go of the bear. Abe Chavez, who founded Abe’s Motel and Fly Shop on the San Juan River in New Mexico back in 1958, has managed, against all odds, to keep tripping the light fantastic, for now on sixty years. They say that starting your own business is like dancing with a bear-once you start the dance, you only have two options: keep dancing, or be eaten by the bear.
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