South Platte - Cheesman / Deckers

The South Platte below Cheesman Reservoir, southwest of Denver, and the closest well-known trout water to the Front Range cities. Cheesman Canyon and the Deckers stretch sit on the same river and fish nothing like each other.

Tailwater
Front Range
Nearest town: Deckers

What the water is like

Cheesman Canyon is reached on foot and fishes like technical tailwater: clear, pressured, and unforgiving about drift. Downstream at Deckers the river runs alongside the road, which makes it far easier to reach and far busier on a weekend.

Getting on it

Canyon access is a hike in from trailhead parking. The Deckers water is roadside for much of its length.

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 South Platte - Cheesman / Deckers 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

Front Range