The Fryingpan is the classic Colorado technical tailwater, fourteen miles of cold, clear, mysis-rich water below Ruedi Dam where rainbows and browns grow heavy and selective. The first pool under the dam — the one everybody calls the Toilet Bowl — holds outrageous fish and an equally outrageous crowd, and there's a temptation to oversell it that's worth resisting. The honest pitch is the rest of the river: small flies, long leaders, and water that fishes through the winter when half the state is iced up. Bring patience and your reading glasses for tying on size 24s.
The Fryingpan comes out of Ruedi Reservoir and runs fourteen miles down a tightening valley to meet the Roaring Fork at Basalt, and the first mile of it — the plunge below the dam that everyone calls the Toilet Bowl — may hold more big trout per yard than anywhere in Colorado. The reason floats out of the dam: Mysis shrimp, tiny translucent crustaceans flushed from the depths of the reservoir, a year-round protein conveyor that grows rainbows to absurd sizes and makes them maddeningly selective. The river is a clear, cold tailwater forty to eighty feet wide, flatter and weedier up top, more freestone and canyon-like as it nears Basalt. The bed is gravel and rock, the water gin-clear. Wading is straightforward, but the fish have advanced degrees and the famous water can be elbow-to-elbow.
Wading: Gin clear water over wary, well fed trout
- Mixed
- Partly confined
- Pool riffle