Cheesman Canyon is the one that humbles people. It's a hike-in granite gorge below Cheesman Dam holding wild, educated browns and rainbows in water so clear it feels indecent, and the fish have seen every fly ever tied. You sight-fish, you go small, you use tippet you can barely see, and you accept that some of the best fish in Colorado are going to refuse you politely all afternoon. It's catch-and-release flies-and-lures water, technical to the core, and worth every bit of the walk in.
Cheesman Canyon is the South Platte's masterpiece and its hardest exam. Below Cheesman Dam the river drops into a granite slot of the Pikes Peak batholith — great rounded domes and boulders of pale decomposing granite — and runs as a clear, cold, technical tailwater that has humbled more good fishermen than it has pleased. The trout are wild, abundant and famously educated, holding in glassy pools and pocket water where a drag-free drift is a theoretical concept rather than an achievable one. You hike in; there are no roads. The bed is granite boulder and gravel, the water low and clear most of the year, every fish visible and every fish skeptical. Wading is rock-hopping among slick granite. Cheesman is where Colorado anglers go to be reminded that they are not as good as they think they are, and they keep going back.
Wading: Slick granite boulders, hike in only
- Mixed
- Confined
- Step pool
- Pool riffle