Montana’s Classic Stonefly Bench: Colorado — Cheesman Canyon, the Frying Pan, the Roaring Fork, and the Arkansas
Series: Montana’s Classic Stonefly Bench — Article 7
Colorado trout went to graduate school.
This is not an opinion. It is the conclusion of every angler who has stood in Cheesman Canyon on the South Platte staring at a twenty-inch brown trout feeding six inches below the surface on something too small to see, presented four different flies on 7X tippet, watched the fish refuse all of them without accelerating its heart rate, and driven back to Denver with the distinct sensation that the river has a PhD and you have a library card.
Colorado fly fishing is beautiful, technically demanding, frequently humbling, and occasionally transcendent in ways that no other western state quite replicates. The Frying Pan below Ruedi Reservoir is fourteen miles of Gold Medal water where rainbow trout grow to ten pounds on mysis shrimp pumped directly from the dam and then develop opinions about everything a fly fisherman subsequently tries to feed them. The Roaring Fork through Basalt and Carbondale is blue ribbon freestone water with a stonefly calendar that runs from the Skwala in early spring through golden stones in July and little yellow stones into August. The Arkansas from its headwaters near Leadville down through Salida and on to Cañon City covers more varied river character in a single drainage than most states manage across their entire trout water inventory.
I have spent days of genuine splendor on all of it. Cheesman Canyon on the South Platte down through the Deckers stretch. The Frying Pan. The Roaring Fork. The headwaters of the Arkansas in the high country above Leadville where the river is narrow enough to jump across and the cutthroat don’t yet know that fly fishers exist. These are not casual day trips. They are destinations that deserve full attention and return multiple times on the attention invested.
This is Article 7 of Montana’s Classic Stonefly Bench. The series that started on Pat Barnes’ bench in West Yellowstone has crossed Wyoming and arrived in Colorado, where the rivers are colder, the fish are smarter, the hatch charts are more complicated, and the drive back to the truck takes longer than you planned because nothing in Colorado is as close as the map suggests.
You already know everything that will happen. Go anyway.
Table of Contents
Four Colorado Rivers, One Shared Requirement
The South Platte, the Frying Pan, the Roaring Fork, and the Arkansas are different rivers with different characters, different fish, and different demands. What they share is the requirement that you be better than you were on the last river you fished.
The South Platte through Cheesman Canyon and Deckers:
is Colorado’s proving ground. The canyon section is two miles of some of the most demanding dry fly water in North America — clear, cold tailwater flowing through a granite gorge where the fish hold in spring creek-style lies and inspect every fly with the deliberate calm of something that has never had a bad day and intends to keep it that way. The Deckers stretch below the canyon opens the river into more accessible water — riffles, runs, gravel bars, classic pocket water — while retaining the South Platte’s fundamental character of highly educated fish in crystal-clear water. This is not a river that rewards impatience. It rewards stealth, precision, fine tippet, and the willingness to change flies before you’ve convinced yourself the current pattern is working.
Flows between 150 and 400 cfs are the Deckers sweet spot. Below that the fish can count your boot studs. Above it you’re nymphing in a freight train. Check the Denver Water gauge before you make the drive. The South Platte’s flows are dam-controlled and they change on a schedule that does not consult your fishing plans.
The Frying Pan:
is fourteen miles of Gold Medal tailwater between Ruedi Dam and the Roaring Fork confluence at Basalt. The mysis shrimp flushed from the deep water of Ruedi Reservoir fatten the Pan’s brown and rainbow trout to sizes that seem implausible for a river this small — fish over ten pounds exist in the upper sections. These are also the most selective trout per mile of any river covered in this series, which makes the mysis shrimp’s role both a blessing and a curse. The trout are enormous because the food supply is extraordinary. They are also almost impossible to fool because the food supply has given them options and options produce preferences and preferences produce refusals. The stonefly hatches on the Pan run from salmonflies in May through little yellow stones in August, and the fish that respond to a stonefly dry during an active hatch are your best opportunity of the day. Find the hatch. Fish to actively rising fish. Everything else on the Frying Pan is an exercise in humility.
The Roaring Fork:
from its headwaters above Aspen through Carbondale to the Colorado River confluence is the most varied of Colorado’s four great rivers — freestone in character through much of its length, with the stonefly calendar running nearly as long as the Montana rivers that started this series. The Skwala hatch in March and April, golden stones in July, little yellow stones through August. The Roaring Fork through the Snowmass Canyon section and the public water between Basalt and Carbondale is where serious Colorado anglers spend their July — lower pressure than the Pan, more varied water, and golden stone and yellow sally hatches that produce aggressive surface feeding from brown and rainbow trout that haven’t spent their entire lives being presented size 22 midge patterns by Front Range day-trippers.
The Arkansas River:
headwaters begin above Leadville at over 10,000 feet elevation and drop through Salida, through the Royal Gorge, and into Cañon City — a single river covering freestone headwaters, gold medal tailwater, and one of the most dramatic canyon sections in Colorado. The upper Arkansas above Buena Vista is freestone water with cutthroat and brown trout that eat attractor dries without philosophical debate. The gold medal water from Salida to Cañon City holds brown trout that match anything on the South Platte for size and selectivity. The stonefly hatch calendar runs from golden stones in June through yellow sallies in August, and the Arkansas in July is one of the most underrated dry fly rivers in the state.
