Brian Ellis and Matt McClure traveled to Colorado from June 7–12 to fish the South Platte River system and Spinney Reservoir, landing quality rainbow and brown trout across multiple fisheries. Despite low snowfall, fluctuating flows, and heavy winds that created challenging conditions, persistence and adaptability led to consistent action and a successful trip. One of the highlights of the trip was hooking up for a couple days with good friend, well known fly fisherman and author Landon Mayer where we hauled in some pigs.  If you are planning a trip to fish South Park area of the South Platte River I highly encourage you to have him guide you.  If that’s of interest you’ll need to book well in advance as he is a highly sought after guide and books up to a year in advance.  You can reach out to him via his website or contact me.

We fished:

Eleven Mile Canyon
Cheeseman Canyon
Dream Stream
Spinney Reservoir

Low snowfall over the winter created tough fishing conditions in some of the tailout sections due to minimal melt-off. Denver Water made a decision to drain Antero Reservoir, which created flow fluctuations in the South Platte. This mixed up the timing of hatches and flows and confused the fish. However, we worked hard and had successful days of netting quality fish as you’ll see in the photos.