Fly Fishing Tarryall Creek

Fly fishing Tarryall Creek – Pike National Forest is an exercise in scaling down. This is a small Park County freestone that starts at the outlet of Tarryall Reservoir and works south and east through Pike National Forest, trading back and forth between red-granite canyon and open South Park meadow before it gives itself up to the South Platte near Lake George. The corridor sits around 8,200 feet, so the air is thin, the water runs cold, and the fishing calendar is compressed. Lake George is the nearest town and Denver the nearest airport, which puts the creek within a morning's drive of the Front Range yet a world away from the parking lots at Deckers and Cheesman.

Call it a creek and mean it. The canyon reaches fish as riffle-run and pocket water, boulders breaking the current into short seams and buckets that rarely require more than a rod's length of line. The best browns sit under cut banks and in the plunge pools below the bigger rocks, tight to the fast-slow edge rather than out in the current. The meadow water is a different animal — longer, flatter glides through open grass where fish are visible and every step telegraphs. A 4- or 5-weight covers both, and accuracy matters far more than distance. Nothing here floats; it is a wading creek end to end.

The fish are wild and unstocked, and they act like it. Brown trout dominate the section, rainbow trout show up scattered through the better runs, and cutthroat trout turn up occasionally in the upper reaches. Average size runs 10 to 14 inches, which is honest for water this small — these are not tailwater giants, but they are beautifully colored, willing when approached properly, and quick to shut down after a sloppy first cast.

Bugs follow a short, high-country freestone progression. Blue-winged olives carry the spring and come back again in fall, bringing steady midday risers on gray, overcast days. Caddis run from late spring well into early fall and draw the most aggressive surface takes in the canyon runs. Pale morning duns fill the summer window, while yellow sallies and golden stones bring fish up from late spring into summer. Midges work all year, particularly in the slower pools and through the cold months. Most days you are searching rather than matching, so a buoyant attractor dry with a small bead-head suspended off the bend lets you fish the seams and the buckets in one pass; when the risers get picky, a low-riding mayfly imitation on light tippet sorts them out. Deep canyon pockets call for a tight-line nymph rig that gets to the bottom in a single boulder-length drift.

Flows are modest, generally somewhere between 15 and 100 cfs, and reservoir releases drive them. There is no live gage on this section — the station near Lake George is inactive, and the active one above the reservoir near Como reads inflow rather than what is coming out. Read the water and lean on local shop reports. Spring runoff pushes it too high for comfortable wading; once it drops, wading is moderate but the low, transparent late-summer water rewards long leaders, fine tippet, and staying low.

Access runs through the national forest. Twin Eagles Campground, roughly 14 miles north of Lake George on County Road 77, and Spruce Grove Campground about a mile beyond, both put you on good water with trails following the creek; Ute Creek Trailhead offers a quieter way into the upper canyon. County Road 77 parallels the creek for much of its length, but substantial private ground sits between the forest parcels, so pay attention to posted boundaries and fish only from confirmed public land. Midweek is quiet, and even weekends stay light by Front Range standards.