Cheesman Canyon

“If you say ‘South Platte’, in the circles I travel in, you probably mean the catch and release water in Cheesman Canyon.” That was the first time I had heard of Cheesman Canyon, the words coming from John Gierach in his book The View from Rat Lake.

The second time Cheesman Canyon was mentioned was by fishing friend Bob Hart who had returned from Denver, Colorado where he had gone fishing on the South Platte River, or more specifically, Cheesman Canyon.

“If you fish nowhere else in the world for trout, you have to fish this water,” Bob said. An extraordinary comment coming from a fly fisher with passport entries ranging from Alaska and British Columbia, to Iceland, New Zealand and even Tasmania.

Bob added a rider: “And if you do fish Cheesman Canyon, make sure you use Pat Dorsey as a guide.” A strong statement from a man some regard as a cynical old journalist.

In the annals of fly-fishing, Cheesman Canyon is regarded as a gold medal trout fishery. Located about an hour and a half drive west of Denver, it is one of the longest public tail waters in Colorado and has achieved fame for its smart, hard-to-land trout, which is why it attracts the best and most serious fly fishers. The canyon has been written up so often in American fly fishing magazines and books that it has attained iconic status.

I stopped off at Denver on my way to Canada, met up with Bob and the next morning we headed for Cheesman. First stop on the way is the Blue Quill Angler, a specialist fly shop about 30 miles west of Denver in a small community called Evergreen. Shop owner Jim Cannon said the blue winged olive (or blue quill) is the alpha and omega of fly-fishing in Colorado.

“In spring the blue winged olive is the first baetis to emerge and means the fishing cycle is starting,” Jim explained. “In autumn (fall) the blue winged olive is back in big hatches; it is the last mayfly and says goodbye to the fishing year.”

Americans are famous for their outdoor stores known as outfitters. If you haven’t been to a Bass Pro or Cabelas shop then you should—if only for the over-the-top experience. These folk will deck you out from your feet to your head—not to mention the enormous range of fishing tackle on offer. Why, you can even buy a gun, in case of bears or mountain lions. As grand as shops like Bass Pro and Cabelas are, the hands on advice and experience that comes with a well run small shop is a whole different experience. It is the difference between the ability to talk the talk or walk the walk.

Anglers get to know the best tackle stores through word-of-mouth, which is how I found out about the Blue Quill Angler, through Bob who in turn was directed to the shop by, of all people, an Orvis salesman! I wasn’t born a tackle-shopaholic; it just developed, along with my fishing, so the urge to pay the shop a visit was impossible to pass up.

The building housing the Blue Quill was built in 1899 as a machine shop for a cattle ranch on the front range of the Rocky Mountains, and was used to house cattle in winter. The fly shop opened in 1988 and Jim said the shop was more than a retail outlet as much of the emphasis was on teaching and guiding waters within two hours drive including the Colorado, Williams Fork, Blue, Arkansas and South Platte rivers. Jim and wife Martha have a couple of partners; fly-fishing guides Pat Dorsey and Steve Parrot.

Cheesman has been so widely publicised that you have doubts about whether to venture there. Many fly fishers live in the US so you could rightly expect to find the water crowded. This was not the case when I went with Bob and guide Pat Dorsey. Nobody was on the river when we arrived, and at the end of the day, only three other fly fishers had made the 40 minute trek over the mountain from the parking lot.

Pat has 18 years experience on this water, is widely regarded as one of the most capable fly-fishing guides in North America and he literally wrote the book on fishing the South Platte River (A fly fishing guide to the South Platte River, Pruett Publishing).

Such is Pat’s legendary status that it is said he knows every trout in the canyon by name. I’m not sure if that’s true, but there is no denying his ability to spot fish that we mortals cannot see until he points them out.

We parked in a lot signposted Trail Head Parking on highway CR 126, near a small community called Deckers. If you reach a sign saying Wig Wam Club, you have gone too far. From the car park, it is a walk of about 2 km on the Gill Trail through pine forest. Waders are carried and at more than 6500 feet above sea level, the air is thin and it takes a little while to acclimatize.

Cheesman Canyon is about five kilometres long from the Cheesman dam down to the Wig Wam Club, which is private water. The beauty of the canyon lies not just in the fishery: one side is heavily forested; on the other trees are sparse, finding it difficult to take root along the steep, boulder-strewn escarpment. Large boulders grace the river which runs clear and cool, with runs and riffles that flow into pools where trout, brown and rainbow, take shelter and feed on passing insects. The pools bear names like Family Hole, Ice Box, Floating Rock and Meat Hole.

The South Platte is a fly and lure fishery only and anything other than barbless single hooks are frowned upon. Pat started our day by rigging up for nymphing. He recommends a 2.7 m (9 ft), 5-weight fly rod with a 2.2 to 3 m tapered leader. He ties on about 40 cm of tippet 6x (2 kg) to the leader and a size 22 Mercury Midge Nymph. Below that, he adds another 40 cm of 6x and a sparkle-wing RS2 fly. A beige coloured yarn strike indicator is set above the flies. To run the flies deeper, lead putty is put on the leader and this is adjusted during the course of the day depending on river flow and water depth.

Trout do most of their feeding on the bottom of deep runs that are ideally located below riffles where they are supplied with a more or less constant flow of nymphs and aerated water. Deep bottom currents are slower than at the surface so the fish expends little energy for maximum food intake. The weighted rig is cast upstream and sinks as it drifts downstream. The drift of the nymph is followed with the rod tip, with just enough slack in the line to allow the fly to achieve a dead drift.

Sight fishing is important and casting is not. Sometimes the fly-line is barely a couple of metres out of the guides, the leader long enough to set the flies to a run being fished. On this day, the trout are being finicky. Every time the nymph strikes a rock or the bottom you think you have a bite and Pat says it is important to strike, just in case. The first trout, a brown from the Ice Box, comes after Pat says to set the hook. He saw the trout open its mouth and inhale the nymph! Pat has eyes to rival Superman.

As in all tail waters, water flows can vary. Normal flow in this river is about 250 cubic feet a second; when we started fishing the river was running about 140 cfs, but the flow increased later in the day.

I read a classic description of the water clarity in this stretch of the South Platte. It was John Gierach and he wrote: ‘The water is kind of muddy, but at the same time silvery, green. The flashing sides of a wild South Platte rainbow are exactly the same colour, except there’s a hint of the aged beer can to it, a living, and not so quite metallic, feeling to it.’ That is how it appears.

Brown trout in this river average 10–15 inches and rainbow trout 14–18. The best time for fishing is during the North American summer. Pat says high water flows in May and June see the trout foraging more and a lot less spooky: “When the water is high and the trout start eating big stoneflies the fishing is at its best,” he said.

Finally, there is the tale Gierach tells of the fishing writer who sent a story on Cheesman Canyon to a national outdoor magazine and the editor wrote back, “Christ! Don’t you guys in Colorado fish anywhere else?”