What a Colorado tailwater day asks of your gear

A tailwater is a river below a dam, fed by water released from a reservoir rather than by whatever the weather is doing. In Colorado that describes a good proportion of the best-known trout water: the Fryingpan below Ruedi, the Taylor below Taylor Park, the Blue below Dillon, the South Platte below Cheesman and Eleven Mile.

Tailwaters share a set of characteristics, and those characteristics make specific demands of your kit. Understanding why is more useful than a shopping list, because it transfers to any tailwater you ever fish.

What makes a tailwater different

• Cold, and cold year-round. Water drawn from depth in a reservoir comes out at a fairly consistent temperature, which is why these rivers fish in January when their freestone neighbours are locked up.
• Clear. The reservoir acts as a settling basin, so tailwaters run clear most of the time, including when nearby freestones are running brown.
• Stable. Flow is managed rather than weather-driven, so conditions change less day to day, though they can change abruptly when a release changes.
• Rich, and consistently so. Stable temperature and flow support dense insect life, which supports a lot of fish, and often large ones.
• Pressured. All of the above is widely known. Tailwater fish have seen a great many flies.

Add those together and you get the defining feature: the fish get a long, clear, unhurried look at your fly, and they have seen it before. Nearly every gear decision below follows from that one sentence.

Rod: lighter than you would take to a freestone

The job is delicate presentation at short range with light tippet, not distance and not wind-punching. That points at a lighter line weight than the all-purpose choice, and towards a rod with enough tip softness to protect fine tippet when a good fish makes a sudden move.

Length is worth thinking about separately from weight. A slightly longer rod gives you more reach to hold line off conflicting currents, which is most of what controls a nymph drift. On small, tight, brushy tailwater stretches that advantage reverses, because you cannot swing a long rod under overhanging branches.

What to look for, in order: a soft enough tip to protect light tippet, length matched to how open the stretch is, and a reasonably fast recovery so you can make accurate short casts rather than lobbing.

Tippet: finer, and the real reason why

Clear water and educated fish mean fine tippet, and this is the one place where going cheap genuinely costs you fish.

The usual explanation is that the fish can see thicker tippet. That is part of it. The more important part is that thicker, stiffer tippet drags the fly: it is harder for a small fly to drift naturally on heavy line, and unnatural movement is what a fish in clear slow water notices first.

Practical points that matter more than brand:

• Fluorocarbon for subsurface work. It sinks rather than floating, and it has a refractive index closer to water than nylon does. It costs more and it is worth it below the surface.
• Nylon for dry flies. It floats, it is more supple, and it costs less.
• Replace it more often than feels necessary. Tippet degrades with sun and abrasion, and the coil that has been on your vest for two seasons is not what it was.
• Carry a range. The ability to drop a size when fish are refusing is worth more than any fly in the box.

Indicators and weight: the adjustable part

On a tailwater you will spend the day making small adjustments to depth, and the kit that makes that easy earns its place.

For indicators, the thing to look for is whether you can move it up and down the leader quickly without damaging the line. Anything that requires cutting and re-tying to change depth will quietly stop you making adjustments you should be making. Small and subtle beats large and bright in clear water, because a heavy indicator landing over a fish in slow clear water is a splash it will notice.

For weight, the same principle: something you can add and remove repeatedly. The difference between fishing and not fishing is frequently a single small adjustment in how deep the flies are running, and any friction in making that adjustment costs you fish. See nymph rigs for why depth is almost always the problem.

Staying warm enough to keep fishing

This is the most commonly underestimated part of tailwater kit, and the one that actually decides how long your day lasts.

Tailwaters are coldest exactly when they fish best, which is winter. Standing in near-freezing water in still air, not moving much, is a different thermal problem from hiking. And the specific failure mode is not being cold in general: it is losing dexterity in your hands, at which point you cannot re-tie a small fly on fine tippet, and the day is effectively over regardless of how the fish are behaving.

What matters, roughly in order:

• Layers under waders that insulate while compressed. Waders press your layers flat against your legs, which destroys the loft that most insulation depends on. Fleece and synthetic base layers handle this better than puffy insulation does.
• Nothing cotton, anywhere. It holds water against you and stops insulating entirely when damp.
• Warm feet, with room to spare. Oversized boots with thick socks beat tight boots with thicker socks, because circulation does more for warm feet than insulation does. Tight boots make cold feet, every time.
• Hand management. Fingerless gloves, a way to dry your hands, and something genuinely warm to put over them between fish. Your hands are the thing that ends the day.
• A wind layer. Wind is what turns a manageable cold day into an unmanageable one, and it costs very little to carry a shell.

Small things that matter more than they should

• Polarised glasses. On clear water they let you see fish, structure and depth changes that are otherwise invisible. Also the one piece of kit here that is genuinely about safety, since a hook at eye height is a real risk.
• Magnification. Tying small flies onto fine tippet in flat winter light is a young person's game, and a cheap clip-on magnifier extends your career considerably.
• A stream thermometer. Cheap, tiny, and it tells you where in the river to look, which is worth more than another fly pattern.
• A wading staff, on the bigger ones. Cold water and slick rock are a bad combination, and several of these rivers are pushier than they look.

What you do not need

The most useful gear advice is often that you can skip something, so: you do not need a second rod, you do not need an expensive reel for this water, and you do not need a large fly selection to start.

Reels on trout water are line holders with a drag you will rarely rely on, because a trout is usually played off the rod and your hands. Spending heavily there buys you less than the same money spent on tippet, layers and glasses. And a small box of the right flies for the river you are actually standing in beats a large box assembled from general advice, which is why fly selection belongs to a specific water and a specific month rather than to an article.

Where the river-specific detail lives

Which tailwater, which section and which month all change the answer, and those specifics are exactly the things that go out of date. Our river guides say what kind of water each Colorado river is and where to check its current state. The month-by-month hatch detail, fly box checklists and researched flow guidance for the fifteen waters are in the Colorado Playbook, with an edition date so you know how current it is.

Before any trip, check flows and water temperature on the USGS gauge for your reach and the current regulations and closures with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Several of these rivers have section-specific tackle restrictions that differ from the statewide rules.