Fly Fishing Colorado

[MattS]

Hello all,

I have been fly fishing for 6 years and would like to get out to Colorado. I was just wondering what fishing was like out there and how it compares to Missouri. Obviously there are many different streams, region and seasons in Colorado, but I would most likely be fishing June in rivers like the Yampa and Elk (near Steamboat). How many fish would be caught on an average day on a well-known river? To my knowledge these are wild trout but the trout per mile in those rivers is very high so I don't really know what to expect. Any comments would be nice. Thanks

[ness]

One thing to keep in mind is timing your fishing for after runoff. Don't know if the rivers you mention are freestone (not tail waters) but they may be running pretty high in June if they are. It'd be worth checking reports specific to the area you're going to be in, or tailoring your trip to the fishing if that's a priority.

[Ill Trout Bum]

I second the comment about the spring runoff. The first time I went to Colorado, I set up a trip for the end of June. The week before I arrived, the temps were in the 90's and there was higher than normal runoff. That being said June is a very unpredictable month for fly fishing in most of Colorado. There are generally huge crowds of tourists everywhere and it gets very crowded even on a weekday.

I prefer to take my trip after Labor Day. The crowds are gone and it is the start of the brown trout run. I would recommend areas such as the upper Arkansas near Hayden Meadows down to Granite Wildlife Area. I recently fished this area on the first week of September. Fishing was great and we only saw a couple of other anglers in this stretch.

I would recommend staying away form Spinney Mountain aka " the Dream Stream" as it tends to draw large crowds and the ongoing stream rehabilitation project makes the lower end unfishable. I would recommend fishing the South Platte near Tomahawk SWA. Here is a link to the various Colorado state wildlife areas. It shows all the public access areas and I have found it to be very useful over the years. Good luck.

http://ndismaps.nrel.colostate.edu/propertyfinder/index.aspx?keyword=public&value=Knight-Imler SWA