Fryingpan River

The Fryingpan below Ruedi Reservoir, running fourteen miles down to Basalt where it meets the Roaring Fork. Small water with a very large reputation.

Tailwater
Roaring Fork Valley
Nearest town: Basalt

What the water is like

Classic technical tailwater: cold, clear, stable, and fished hard year-round. The water immediately below the dam is where the best-known and most-photographed fish live, and it fishes accordingly.

Getting on it

A road follows the river the whole way with numerous pull-offs, alternating between public water and private frontage that is marked.

Access arrangements are the single thing most worth confirming before you drive. Public frontage, parking, fees and seasonal closures all change, and on several Colorado rivers the boundary between public and private water is neither obvious nor forgiving. Check with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and, where the water runs through a national park or a federally managed area, with the agency that manages it.

Before You Go

What this page will not tell you

What the Fryingpan River is running at today, what is hatching this week, and what the current rules are. Those are live facts with an official publisher, and sending you to them beats printing a number here that goes stale by April.

USGS current water data for Colorado

Live streamflow and water temperature, gauge by gauge.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Current fishing regulations, licences, and property and access rules.

CPW fishing conditions and closures

Voluntary and mandatory closures, including heat-related ones.

Water levels and weather change daily and can be hazardous, and nothing on this page is a safety assessment of this river or of conditions on any given day.

Gear for this kind of water

What a tailwater asks of your kit, written for the situation rather than as a product list.

Any Colorado river, any season

Colorado fly fishing gear checklist

Everything worth having in the car and on your person for a Colorado day, what each item is actually for, and what changes by season.

Colorado rivers, season by season

Colorado fly box: what to carry by season

A working fly selection for Colorado water through the year, organised by what the river is doing rather than by a hatch calendar that cannot be promised.

Other waters

Roaring Fork Valley