Ask ten anglers about Dream Stream best flies and you’ll get ten answers, and most of them are right — for about six weeks of the year. This is roughly a mile of Gold Medal tailwater between the outlet of Spinney Mountain Reservoir and the inlet of Eleven Mile Reservoir, and the pattern that wins in April is close to useless in August. What doesn’t change is the shape of the problem: clear, flat meadow water at 8,593 feet, trout that get a long look at everything, and a food base that leans small.
So rather than one “best” list, treat this as a working fly box organized the way the season actually unfolds. There’s a year-round core that never leaves the box, and then four windows that layer on top of it.
What This Water Asks For
The Dream Stream fishes in a narrow flow band, roughly 100 to 300 cfs. It’s flat water, not pocket water. The channel drops about eleven feet per mile through open South Park meadow, so wading is easy and cover is nonexistent. You will see the fish. The fish will also see you, your line, and every bit of drag in your drift.
That geometry drives fly choice more than any hatch chart does. Resident trout run in the 12- to 16-inch class. The migratory rainbows and browns that push up out of the reservoirs are what stretch that upper end. Either way, 6X and 7X tippet are standard, and small patterns fished honestly beat big patterns fished hopefully. The whole reach is artificial flies and lures only, catch and release. Barbless hooks and a rubber-bag net are the right call for fish going straight back.
The Year-Round Core
Three food groups are on the menu twelve months a year, and they’re the reason this stretch fishes even when nothing is emerging.
Midges are the constant. Larvae and pupae in sizes 20 through 26 will take fish on any day of any month, and morning and evening are the strongest windows. If you carry nothing else, carry midges.
Scuds and sowbugs in sizes 14 to 18 are the other half of the tailwater equation. Both are abundant here and available all day. That’s why a two-fly rig with a scud on point and a midge on the dropper is such a reliable searching setup. Aquatic worms in sizes 10 to 14 round it out. They earn their keep after a bump in flow out of Spinney, when releases dislodge them from the sediment and fish key on them for a day or two.
Spring: Baetis, Eggs, and the Rainbow Run
From mid-March into late May, two things happen at once. Blue-winged olives start coming off midday in sizes 18 to 22, and lake-run rainbows move in to spawn. March browns show up in the same window, notably bigger at sizes 10 to 14 and skewing toward afternoon. Mahogany duns fill the April-into-May slot at 14 to 18.
The egg game is real in spring — orange, pink and peach patterns in sizes 14 to 18, fished behind the migration. So is the streamer game, in sizes 4 to 8 at dawn and dusk. Both come with an obligation: do not fish directly over spawning redds. The fish are here to reproduce. A Gold Medal fishery stays a Gold Medal fishery because anglers walk around the gravel instead of standing in it.
Time Your Visit with the Hatch
The Hatch Charts in the FlyGuysNLies app show insect emergence windows by river so you can plan around what the fish are actually eating.
Emergence windows up here run later than what you’d expect from Cheesman Canyon or the water below Eleven Mile — elevation pushes everything back — so checking the timing by river beats tying on a searching pattern and wondering why nobody’s looking up.
Summer: PMDs, Tricos, Caddis and Terrestrials
Summer is the busiest stretch of the calendar, and the one where Dream Stream best flies get genuinely crowded. Pale morning duns start around the third week of June and run into mid-August, midday, sizes 18 to 22. Tricos overlap them from mid-July and carry into October. Same 18 to 22 range, same midday timing — and when the spinner fall lands right, it’s the best dry-fly hour of the year here.
Caddis fill the evenings from mid-June through mid-September in sizes 16 to 20, heaviest from late afternoon into dusk. Yellow sallies work the mornings from mid-June to mid-August at 12 to 16. There are no big stoneflies in this reach; the reservoir above cuts off that life cycle.
Then there’s the meadow itself. Ants run from mid-June through September and hoppers from July through September, both in the 8 to 16 range. They’re the reason a dry-dropper rig makes so much sense here in August. Hang a small midge or PMD nymph off a hopper, walk the bank, and cover fish without ever changing rigs. We broke down the section-by-section version of that summer dry-fly plan separately, in the Dream Stream dry fly guide.
Fall: Browns, Kokanee and a Second Baetis Window
Blue-winged olives come back from early September through mid-November, and mahogany duns return alongside them in September and October. That’s the dry-fly half of fall.
The other half belongs to the migration. Browns push up out of Eleven Mile from mid-September, and kokanee salmon run with them. Egg patterns in cream, orange and darker shades, sizes 14 to 18, are the workhorse from mid-September into December, and streamers at 4 to 8 fish well at first and last light through mid-November.
One thing to plan around: portions of this stretch may be closed as posted from September 15 through December 31 for kokanee spawning. That’s a posted, seasonal closure, so read the signs at the access rather than assuming last year’s boundaries still apply.
The Short List, by Season
| Season | Go-to patterns | Sizes |
|---|---|---|
| Year-round | Midge larvae and pupae, scuds, sowbugs, aquatic worms | 20–26 midges; 14–18 scuds and sowbugs; 10–14 worms |
| Spring (mid-Mar–May) | Blue-winged olives, March browns, mahogany duns, eggs, streamers | 18–22 BWO; 10–14 March brown; 14–18 mahogany and eggs; 4–8 streamers |
| Summer (mid-Jun–Aug) | PMDs, tricos, caddis, yellow sallies, ants and hoppers | 18–22 PMD and trico; 16–20 caddis; 12–16 yellow sally; 8–16 terrestrials |
| Fall (Sep–mid-Nov) | Baetis, mahogany duns, brown-trout eggs, streamers | 18–22 BWO; 14–18 mahogany and eggs; 4–8 streamers |
Rigging for Flat, Clear Meadow Water
Fly choice gets most of the attention, but on water this smooth the rig is what usually decides the day. Long leaders and 6X to 7X fluorocarbon are the baseline. Indicators want to be small — a yarn tuft or a tiny plastic thing, not a bobber you can see from the parking lot. And because the current is even, depth control comes from where you place the weight, not from how much you pile on.
Sight fishing is the default approach when light allows it. Spot a fish, watch it feed for a minute to learn its rhythm and its lane, then put the fly in that lane. Blind-fishing the seams works, but it’s a distant second on a stretch where you can usually just find the trout.
Flows matter more than the calendar for deciding whether to make the drive. Anywhere in that 100-to-300 cfs band fishes; the bottom of it means spookier fish and even lighter tippet. Pull up River Conditions in the FlyGuysNLies app the night before and you’ll know whether you’re walking into a low-and-technical day or something more forgiving.
Access, Regulations and Nearby Water
Access is straightforward. Charlie Meyers State Wildlife Area provides the primary parking at the Spinney Mountain Reservoir outlet, and you walk downstream from there through open meadow. The whole stretch is about a mile, which is part of the appeal and part of the problem — it concentrates anglers, especially during the spring and fall migrations.
Regulations are simple and strict: artificial flies and lures only, all fish returned to the water immediately, plus the posted fall closures. Check current rules with Colorado Parks and Wildlife before you go, and if you want to put something back into this fishery, Colorado Trout Unlimited is the place to start.
When the meadow is stacked up, South Park gives you outs. The water above Spinney fishes differently and sees a fraction of the traffic, Eleven Mile Canyon sits just below the lower reservoir, and Tarryall Creek is a genuinely different experience twenty minutes away. All three are worth a morning when the Dream Stream has a car at every pullout.
We keep flow ranges, hatch timing and access notes current in the FlyGuysNLies app — check conditions and hatches there before you rig up.
