Trout Warriors: Finding Peace in the Rio Peñasco
A fly fishing program to heal disabled veterans. Four vets made their first trip to the Sacramentos to fish the Rio Peñasco, invited by Susan Maynard, who had observed a similar program firsthand.
On a Tuesday evening in late April, a group of five men sits next to Susan Maynard at the family-style picnic tables in the back of Cloudcroft Brewing Company, chatting over cold pints and pink lemonade.
They are fly fishermen — or learning to be — and they had driven hours from across New Mexico and West Texas to chase trout in the waters near Cloudcroft. But the fishing, it turns out, is almost beside the point.
The group was Trout Warriors, a program run through Enchanted Circle Trout Unlimited (ECTU) that uses fly fishing as a form of healing for disabled and combat veterans.
Founded in November 2023, the program has quietly grown into something remarkable — over 80 fly fishing events, retreats, and guide trips since its launch, more than 3,000 participant hours logged, and more than $79,000 invested in veterans who have given far more than that to their country.
Their guide and driving force is Doc Thompson — a professional fly fishing outfitter, published author, and longtime Orvis-sponsored guide who has fished New Mexico waters for over 30 years and has flies named after him sold by Orvis. On this trip, the credentials take a back seat to the calling.
How They Found Cloudcroft
The visit to the Sacramento Mountains happened because Susan refused to let illness stop her from saying yes.
A cancer fighter and survivor since 2010, and while living with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, she participated in Casting for Recovery — a national nonprofit offering fly fishing retreats for breast cancer survivors — at a private ranch in southeastern New Mexico in 2025. Doc was her personal guide that weekend.
“Doc did most of the casting,” she said with a grin, “but I caught that one fish and I was thrilled to death.”
Doc later said, “She did a lot of the casting. Don’t let her fool you.”
What the experience gave her was harder to quantify than a fish count. The retreat offered private cabins, three meals a day, volunteer oncologists, group discussions, fly tying instruction, and a full day on the water — fifteen women survivors, the youngest 29, the oldest nearly 80, spending four days together.
When Susan got home, she told Doc about Cloudcroft. She said if he was ever in the area, to come find her. He took her up on it.
Susan and her husband Jim Maynard hosted the Trout Warriors group at Cloudcroft Brewing Company, treating the veterans to dinner and a tour of the grounds before they retired to the Cabins at Cloudcroft and rested up for their fishing adventure the next day at Mulcock Ranch.
.‘Big Two-Hearted River’
This outing brought together four veterans — three Army, as they were quick to point out, with good-humored jabs at their Navy companion — for a multi-day fishing trip into water most of them had never explored.
Doc described the effect of an activity like fly fishing as an act of recovery. “The concentration that fly fishing requires stimulates the brain and mind to help ease the stresses of TBI, traumatic brain injury, and PTSD, and just trying to aid in resetting the brain.”
The group included Nathan Dial, a 25-year Army veteran and recently former mayor of Estancia (he lost a narrow re-election race in November 2025); Robert Park, an Iraq veteran who learned about the program from his twin brother; Mark Jensen, a Sunland Park resident who served alongside Nathan in Afghanistan and was still stationed at Fort Bliss when he first joined the program; and James Stenholm, a younger veteran whose story echoed the program’s larger mission.
Mark described the program’s somewhat counterintuitive approach with a grin: “Doc takes a group of people who are inherently impatient, cranky, quick to anger, and introduces them to the most frustrating, aggravating sport there is.”
There was laughter around the table. Then it got quieter.
“The biggest thing this group gives is teaching patience,” James said. “In the military, it’s always go, go, go. You get to civilian life and it’s a very slow pace. You get angry at people. Fly fishing — walking out in nature — it teaches a good practice of patience.”
Mark connected the program to Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River — a story about a World War I veteran who healed himself by returning to nature and the sport. “Those small, detail-oriented tasks take your mind off of what you’ve been through,” he said. “And that’s kind of what this group does — in addition to camaraderie, connecting with people who’ve been through some of the same things.”
“The biggest part is reconnecting,” James offered, “with the brothers you’re going to miss.”
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More Than Catching Fish
Trout Warriors now serves participants ranging from a Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam-era veteran in his eighties to post-9/11 combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The program is coed and designed to accommodate the full spectrum of mobility. Doc plans outings carefully so participants in wheelchairs or using walkers can reach the water.
“It may take him 15 minutes to get from the vehicle to the chair to start fishing,” Doc said of one mobility-impaired participant, showing a photo on his phone from an outing on the Rio Grande. “But look at him. He’s out there.”
Doc described the educational philosophy simply: “It’s more than just taking somebody fishing. Every stream is different, and every species acts differently. It’s not just knowing how to catch fish.”
The mission runs deeper still. Doc spoke of participants who call him late at night, not knowing what else to do. “I’ll say, ‘All right, what are you doing tomorrow? Let’s go fish.’ Just knowing they can do that gives them a little encouragement — somewhere to push through.”
He’s seen the program’s impact in the most direct terms. One participant, he said, broke down in tears, marking two years since they had stopped sleeping with a pistol under their pillow and reached for a fly rod instead. “When you hear those stories,” Doc said quietly, “you know what this is really doing.”
It’s not just about the camaraderie they find in the group—it’s about giving disabled vets something to connect to when they are alone.
"We want to give them the knowledge that, hey, I'm struggling right now. I know that if I get out on the water, it will benefit them. We try to work towards making them basically somewhat self-sufficient at fly fishing."
The program is free to participants, sustained by the donors and supporters of ECTU. Beyond guided outings, Trout Warriors offers fly tying meetups, Fly Fishing 101 beginner clinics open to disabled vets and active-duty military, and winter Zoom sessions where Doc brings in other professional guides and tiers. One program member builds his own fly rods and teaches classes in Eagle’s Nest.
A Sky Island and Its Waters
Fishing in the Cloudcroft area is a first for all four veterans. They planned to work stretches of the Rio Peñasco and surrounding streams, targeting rainbow and wild brown trout — and possibly brook trout, which Doc noted is on the rarer side for New Mexico, one more feature of the Sacramentos’ distinct sky-island ecology.
Low snowpack this season means the streams are running lean — the snowmelt that feeds mountain streams and creeks is the lifeblood of the fishery. But Doc has worked enough New Mexico water to know that conditions shape an experience without canceling it.
At one point, the table swapped stories about memorable water. Robert described a creek near Vermejo no wider than the tabletop — and the foot-long cutthroats they somehow pulled from it.
That sense of wonder — at the fish, at the water, at the country that surrounds it all — is part of what the program is really offering. “When you catch the fish, it’s pretty amazing,” Doc said. “But it’s not so much about catching the fish as just being out there.”
How to Get Involved
Learn more or support the program at ec-tu.org/trout-warriors or find Trout Warriors on Facebook.
And if you happen to run into Doc at a local brewery — ask him about the trip. He’ll tell you it’s not really about the fish.
“A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current.”
“Nick’s heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.”
—Big Two-Hearted River, Ernest Hemingway
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