{"id":46610,"date":"2021-05-26T01:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T07:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-closes-popular-stretch-of-yampa-river-to-fishing-amid-western-slope-drought\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:32:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:32:49","slug":"colorado-closes-popular-stretch-of-yampa-river-to-fishing-amid-western-slope-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-closes-popular-stretch-of-yampa-river-to-fishing-amid-western-slope-drought\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado closes popular stretch of Yampa River to fishing amid Western Slope drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fort
Fort Collins resident Kyle Evans fishes next to his dad, Bill Evans, of Denver, on May 24 on the tailwater section of the Yampa River below Stagecoach Reservoir south of Steamboat Springs. Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Monday announced an emergency fishing closure of the pristine fishing grounds beginning Tuesday due to drought conditions. (Matt Stensland\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials announced Monday they are closing a popular stretch of the Yampa River below Stagecoach Reservoir dam to prevent overfishing during the drought, an early sign that extremely dry conditions will challenge the Western Slope this summer.<\/p>\n

The state will close a 0.6 mile of the Yampa between the dam and the boundary of Stagecoach State Park south of Steamboat Springs, beginning Tuesday and lasting indefinitely, Parks and Wildlife spokesman Travis Duncan said. Water releases into the Yampa are \u201ccritically low\u201d at only 20% of average for this time of year and will fall below 15%, endangering fish from high water temperatures and lack of food.<\/p>\n

While the Front Range and much of eastern Colorado have enjoyed ample early rainfall and a healthy snowpack in key river basins east of the Continental Divide, parts of northwest and southwest Colorado snowpack are around 30% of normal. Water users from alfalfa farmers to ranchers to float companies are seeing allocations cut by 90% in southwest Colorado, and are making deep cuts to irrigated acres.<\/p>\n

The same stretch of the Yampa has closed in other years as runoff trickles down later in the summer, but state officials and local angling guides could not remember the Stagecoach area closing this early in the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen it ever close this early in my life. I\u2019ve never seen the conditions we\u2019re at, at this moment, it scares me to death,\u201d said Ryan Herbert, who owns Yampa Valley Anglers with his wife, Beth, and guides up and down the river for rainbow, brown and brook trout.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really, really early,\u201d said Andy Schultheiss, executive director of the Colorado Water Trust, which has helped negotiate purchases and releases of relief water from Stagecoach in previous summers. They started past purchase-and-release programs in July or August. \u201cTo announce closures and it\u2019s still May is remarkable, it\u2019s a really bad year. I feel terrible for their recreation industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor it to happen this early is pretty rare,\u201d Duncan said.<\/p>\n

Herbert said he is glad the state is proactively managing river resources and trying to protect them for the long term. But closing the popular stretch will push more anglers downriver into other state-managed areas that will also be low on water. The river is a primary draw for all kinds of visitors who spend money in the valley, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t fish, they can\u2019t tube,\u201d Herbert said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to come up here to a dry stream.\u201d<\/p>\n

In extremely low stream flows, fish are pushed into smaller and smaller pools, where they compete for food and become easier targets for anglers. The state is trying to \u201cprotect the outstanding catch-and-release fishery we have downstream of Stagecoach Reservoir,\u201d said parks and wildlife area aquatic biologist Bill Atkinson, in a release.<\/p>\n

The state said it will work with Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, which owns Stagecoach, on the same kind of cooperative, river-friendly releases they\u2019ve done in the past, but that they wouldn\u2019t happen until later in the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis stretch of the river receives a tremendous amount of fishing pressure, especially in the spring when other resources might not be as accessible,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cThis emergency closure is an effort to protect the resource by giving the fish a bit of a reprieve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atkinson said the Yampa has not seen the usual \u201cspike\u201d in spring water flow that usually gives fish protection and allows them to build back energy after the spring spawn.<\/p>\n

\"A
A rainbow trout swims in the Yampa River just below Stagecoach Reservoir south of Steamboat Springs. (Matt Stensland\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Trout Unlimited\u2019s Colorado division said it supports the closure given \u201cthe meager snowpack and low streamflow conditions just a few days before the traditionally high-water Memorial Day weekend,\u201d spokesman Scott Willoughby said, in an email. \u201cDespite the abundance of precipitation along Colorado\u2019s Front Range and eastern plains this spring, we remain very concerned about the persistent drought and climatic conditions over here on the West Slope, and are working to find efficiencies wherever possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anglers violating the closure below the dam can be cited.<\/p>\n

The extreme Western Slope drought areas mean state officials will monitor other streams carefully for similar stress and possible action, Duncan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be watching it throughout the summer, there\u2019s definitely a possibility for further closures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Other streams that have more runoff should be available for anglers as soon as high waters recede to normal, Duncan said. Anglers can also turn their attention to lakes. The state has suggestions for other fishing locations in northwest Colorado on its website.<\/p>\n

Even in areas where the snowpack was decent in the northwest, Schultheiss said, ground is so dry and plants are so stressed from recent drought and higher temperatures that they have soaked up runoff before it reaches streams and reservoirs. Stressed plants need even more water as temperatures climb above normal in late summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change just makes that all the worse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Herbert said he doesn\u2019t see his guiding business hurt badly from the current closure, but he worries what it means for the rest of the year, and for years to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the scary part, the wildfires that could be possible after the record fires last year. We had more snowpack then than we do now,\u201d Herbert said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

and Wildlife shuts down a key stretch below Stagecoach Reservoir far earlier than in recent years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,1030,885,28,29,430],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-46610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-environment","tag-fishing","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-recreational-and-sporting-goods"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86954,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46610\/revisions\/86954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46610"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=46610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}