Colorado Is Running Dry — And Its Fish Are Paying the Price
Drought has a way of turning orderly systems into emergencies fast. Across Colorado in the summer of 2026, reservoirs that have sustained robust coldwater fisheries for generations are disappearing — not slowly, as some might imagine, but with an urgency that has forced state wildlife managers into triage mode. On June 26, Colorado Parks and Wildlife made a sweeping announcement: three emergency public fish salvages, activated simultaneously at state wildlife areas spanning Huerfano, Costilla, and Larimer counties. The move is a direct response to reservoir drawdowns that are either already underway or imminent, and it marks one of the most significant coordinated fishery emergency actions the state has seen in recent memory.
For anglers, the declaration opens a narrow but remarkable window. For conservationists and water managers, it is a sobering signal of how badly the state's water infrastructure is straining under the pressure of drought, low snowpack, and competing demands from municipalities and agriculture. And for anyone who spends time outdoors in Colorado, it raises a harder question: how many more summers like this can the state's fisheries absorb before the damage becomes permanent?
Three Reservoirs, Three Different Emergencies
With the imminent drawing down of reservoirs at three state properties, Colorado Parks and Wildlife approved emergency public fish salvages at three state properties. Each situation has its own backstory, its own set of culprits, and its own timeline — but all three share the same urgent outcome: fish that will die if anglers don't get to them first.
Wahatoya Reservoir, Huerfano County
The Wahatoya State Wildlife Area in Huerfano County is a coldwater fishery located east of La Veta, and CPW said the City of Walsenburg is drawing down the Wahatoya Reservoir to meet municipal water needs. That is a straightforward, if painful, calculation: when a city is thirsty, the fish lose. Walsenburg is a small community of a few thousand residents tucked against the Culebra Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and its water supply infrastructure depends directly on Wahatoya Reservoir. When that supply runs low, there is no alternative reservoir to pull from — the city draws the water down.
What makes Wahatoya notable beyond its municipal role is its designation as a coldwater fishery — the kind of environment that supports trout, the crown jewel of Colorado fishing. These waters require specific conditions to sustain healthy fish populations, and once they recede below viable levels, recovery isn't guaranteed within a single season. The reservoir's artificial fly and lure regulation has been lifted to allow all bait, excluding live bait fish, which will still be prohibited. That is a significant regulatory loosening. Fly-and-lure-only designations exist to protect fish populations by limiting the effectiveness of bait fishing; removing that restriction signals that CPW's primary concern is no longer preservation but harvest before loss.
Mountain Home Reservoir, Costilla County
Mountain Home Reservoir State Wildlife Area in Costilla County is a fishery near Fort Garland, and because of drought and low snowpack, the Trinchera Irrigation Company is draining the water for irrigation purposes. This situation cuts to the core of the West's oldest and most contentious resource conflict: water for farms versus water for fish. The Trinchera Irrigation Company holds the water rights — that is the operative legal fact — and when crops need irrigation and snowpack has failed to refill the reservoir adequately, those rights take precedence. The fishery, no matter how well-stocked or beloved, has no legal claim to that water.
Soon, the boat ramp at Mountain Home Reservoir will be unavailable, meaning the window for anglers to access the water in any meaningful way is closing quickly. Anyone planning to make the drive out to Fort Garland — a remote stretch of the San Luis Valley's eastern edge — should move now rather than later. The terrain here is high desert, the air thin, and the fishing, while not as celebrated as some of Colorado's marquee trout water, offers a solitude and wildness that dedicated anglers prize.
Douglas Reservoir, Larimer County
Douglas Reservoir State Wildlife Area in Larimer County is a fishery located west of Wellington, and the water will be drawn down primarily to meet irrigation demand. Larimer County sits in northern Colorado along the Front Range, and irrigation pressure from the agricultural belt that stretches east of the mountains is relentless. Douglas Reservoir, though perhaps less well-known than some of the high-country lakes nearby, has served as a reliable local fishery for Front Range anglers who don't want to make a long mountain drive.
Its loss — even temporary — will be felt by a dense population of urban and suburban anglers who rely on accessible water close to Fort Collins and the surrounding communities. Unlike the backcountry reservoirs to the south, Douglas sits within relatively easy reach of a large angling population, which makes the emergency salvage window there potentially more productive in terms of sheer angler participation.
What a Fish Salvage Actually Means — and What It Doesn't
The term "fish salvage" sounds dramatic, and in practice it is. But it has a precise meaning in Colorado wildlife management, and understanding what CPW is and isn't authorizing matters for anyone who plans to participate.
An emergency public fish salvage means the usual fishing restrictions or limitations have been lifted at the three reservoirs, and in a statement, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said the emergency action would mitigate fish loss by giving anglers more opportunity before the water conditions deteriorate. The core tool CPW is deploying here is the removal of bag and possession limits — the numerical caps that normally govern how many fish a single angler can take in a day. Under standard Colorado regulations, those limits exist to ensure sustainable harvest and protect populations over time. Under a salvage order, sustainability is no longer the governing concern; the fish are going to die anyway when the water disappears, so the state is handing anglers the keys and saying, take as many as you can legally handle.
Under the plan, bag and possession limits would be lifted and all "legal methods" of taking would be permitted, state authorities said. However, commercial fishing, casting a net and seining — the use of vertical nets with floats — will still not be allowed, authorities specified. That distinction is important. The state is not opening these waters to industrial-style harvest. The intent is to get individual anglers on the water in numbers large enough to meaningfully reduce the fish population before the drawdown kills them, not to allow commercial operators to strip the reservoir in bulk.
Authorities also noted that it remains illegal for anglers to transport live fish from one body of water to another. That rule, which might seem counterintuitive during a salvage — why not just move the fish? — exists to protect receiving waters from invasive species and disease. Moving live fish between bodies of water is one of the primary pathways through which aquatic invasive species spread, and Colorado has learned hard lessons on that front.
Who Can Participate and What You Need
Anglers age 16 and older will need a valid 2026 Colorado fishing license. That requirement is non-negotiable and will be enforced. A salvage declaration is not a free-for-all; it is a specifically authorized emergency action that still operates within the framework of state law. If you don't already have your 2026 license, get one before you head out — the CPW website and most sporting goods retailers in Colorado can issue them quickly.
It's also worth noting the live baitfish restriction in the context of Wahatoya Reservoir specifically. Artificial fly and lure regulations are lifted for all bait except for live bait fish, and no live bait fish are allowed at elevations higher than 7,000 feet. That elevation restriction is a standing Colorado rule designed to prevent the introduction of non-native baitfish species into high-country coldwater systems, where they can devastate native fish populations. Even in an emergency, that line doesn't move.
The Drought Context: A Season of Cascading Crises
The three-reservoir salvage announced on June 26 didn't emerge from a vacuum. It is the latest chapter in what has been an increasingly dire 2026 season for Colorado's water-dependent ecosystems, a season that has seen CPW issue emergency salvage orders at reservoirs across the state with a frequency that feels genuinely alarming.
Earlier this spring, Colorado Parks and Wildlife approved a fish salvage at Antero Reservoir due to drought conditions, and Denver Water announced its decision to close recreation at Antero Reservoir for the 2026 season as part of its drought response. Antero, a famous trophy trout lake in Park County, is one of the most celebrated fisheries on the Front Range — a destination water that draws serious fly fishers from across the country. Losing it, even temporarily, sent a shockwave through Colorado's angling community.
The reasoning behind that drawdown was straightforward: Antero Reservoir sees a high ratio of evaporation to storage because it is a shallow reservoir with a wide surface area, and deeper reservoirs with less surface area, like Cheesman Reservoir, see less evaporative loss. Denver Water's calculus was essentially about efficiency — moving water out of a leaky container into a more effective one. The city says moving the water to Cheesman Reservoir will prevent around 5,000 acre-feet of water from evaporating, which accounts for approximately 25% of the reservoir's storage capacity. That is not a trivial amount of water by any measure.
CPW did not simply open the gates and walk away from Antero, though. After the public salvage period closed, the agency went further. A team of Colorado fisheries biologists was busy saving as many fish as possible from Antero Reservoir, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife says the salvage operation was a success, with around 1,000 trout netted and transferred to nearby water bodies. The scale of what they pulled out was impressive: "Two-thirds of [the fish] were brown trout ranging from six inches up to, gosh, I mean probably 28 inches," said CPW Senior Aquatic Biologist Kyle Battige. "The rest of the salvaged fish — 981 in total — were mostly big rainbows and cutbows, along with one tiger trout and a tiger muskie."
CPW Northeast Senior Aquatic Biologist Kyle Battige said, "It felt great to be able to salvage fish from Antero Reservoir and relocate them to another location where they can be enjoyed by anglers. Antero can grow some really nice trout and we were able to move 981 fish over to Eleven Mile State Park. We appreciate the close coordination and support from Denver Water along with the thousands of anglers that participated in the emergency public salvage effort, a key to ensure some of Antero's fish did not go to waste."
The reservoir was drained in 2002 as part of the same drought response plan, and again in 2015 for maintenance — which means Antero has survived drawdowns before and come back strong. The precedent provides some reassurance that a well-managed recovery is possible. But the 2026 situation feels different in scale, with multiple reservoirs across entirely separate drainages and counties hitting crisis points simultaneously.
The Eastern Plains told an even grimmer story. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officially authorized an emergency public fish salvage at Nee Noshe Reservoir on the state's Eastern Plains effective June 1, 2026, suspending all size, bag, and possession limits for the reservoir to encourage anglers to harvest the remaining fish populations before the habitat completely dries up — a severe measure that follows a multi-year combination of intense regional drought and reduced reservoir operational capacities. Unlike the mountain reservoirs, which have some hope of refilling when snowpack returns, Nee Noshe Reservoir is drying rapidly and is not projected to refill at any point in the foreseeable future. That is not a drought story with a recovery arc — that is a fishery disappearing from the map.
The reservoir has long served as a premier destination for regional anglers, historically boasting healthy populations of sport fish, including walleye, saugeye, wiper, channel catfish, crappie, and largemouth bass. The loss of that diversity of species in a single body of water represents a genuine ecological and recreational wound for the communities of the Eastern Plains, where public fishing access is already far more limited than in the mountain regions.
The Invasive Species Wrinkle
Any honest accounting of Colorado's fish salvage situation has to reckon with the invasive species dimension, because it complicates the story considerably. When CPW lifts limits and invites thousands of anglers to a single body of water, every piece of equipment those anglers bring and take away becomes a potential vector for aquatic invasive species.
At Antero, this was an explicit concern. CPW said Antero Reservoir is positive for New Zealand mudsnails, an invasive aquatic nuisance species, and they are small and easily hidden in mud on angling equipment and can survive out of water for up to 50 days. New Zealand mudsnails are among the more insidious invasive threats in Western freshwater systems — they reproduce rapidly, outcompete native invertebrates for food, and once established, are nearly impossible to eradicate. An angler who wades Antero and then steps into another stream without decontaminating their waders and boots could inadvertently carry the infestation to a previously clean system.
Aquatic nuisance species are a growing threat to the state's incredible water resources, and CPW urges anglers to help protect the waters they love by cleaning, draining, and drying gear between each and every use. That "clean, drain, dry" protocol isn't just a polite suggestion during a salvage event — it's the difference between a contained crisis and a cascading one. Every angler who participates in a fish salvage at any Colorado reservoir this summer carries a responsibility to decontaminate thoroughly before moving to another water body.
The Bigger Picture: Water Rights, Agriculture, and Fish
Colorado's water law operates on the doctrine of prior appropriation — "first in time, first in right" — which means that holders of senior water rights can draw down reservoirs regardless of ecological consequences. Fish and wildlife managed by CPW typically hold junior or no water rights at all, which puts the agency in the perpetually uncomfortable position of managing ecosystems it cannot legally protect from dewatering.
The Mountain Home Reservoir situation in Costilla County illustrates this dynamic with particular clarity. The Trinchera Irrigation Company has the legal right to drain that water for agriculture, and the drought conditions of 2026 — with low snowpack across the San Luis Valley's headwaters — have created exactly the conditions under which those rights get exercised to the fullest. CPW has no legal mechanism to prevent the drawdown. Its only tool is the emergency salvage, which redirects the fish loss from a silent ecological tragedy into something at least partially useful for the public.
This is not a new conflict in Colorado or across the American West, but it is sharpening as drought conditions intensify and the gap between water supply and water demand grows wider. The summer of 2026 has seen that conflict play out simultaneously across a state that prides itself on its fishing heritage, its outdoor economy, and its ecological stewardship — and the math isn't working out in favor of the fish.
What Recovery Could Look Like
CPW has not given up on the reservoirs currently undergoing drawdown. Battige's comments about Antero offer a template for how the agency thinks about these situations: "Colorado Parks and Wildlife appreciates the public's help in harvesting fish from Antero and utilizing those resources as much as possible," said Kyle Battige, CPW Senior Aquatic Biologist. "We are currently evaluating the feasibility of CPW-led salvage efforts and hope to rebuild into a high-quality fishery once the reservoir is filled in the future."
For some reservoirs, there is historical precedent for successful recovery. Battige explained that while no angler likes to see their favorite lake dry up, the draining of Antero will help bring down populations of other fish, like suckers, that compete with trout. In that framing, a drawdown isn't purely a loss — it can function as a reset, clearing out competing species and allowing managers to rebuild the fishery with a cleaner slate when water returns. That kind of adaptive management perspective is exactly what Colorado's fish populations need their stewards thinking about right now.
The situation for reservoirs like Nee Noshe on the Eastern Plains is far less optimistic. State biologists initiated the salvage order to optimize the community utilization of the natural resource rather than letting the wildlife perish. When no refill is projected in the foreseeable future, the calculus shifts entirely: the best outcome isn't recovery, it's ensuring that the fish provide value to people rather than dying anonymously on a drying lakebed.
What Anglers Should Know Before They Go
If you're planning to take advantage of one of the three active salvage declarations in Huerfano, Costilla, or Larimer counties, a few practical points are worth drilling down on before you load the truck.
First, move quickly. These salvage windows are tied to water levels, not calendar dates. Once a reservoir drops below a usable threshold, the fishing becomes impossible regardless of what the regulations say. At Mountain Home Reservoir in Costilla County, the boat ramp is already approaching the point of becoming inaccessible, meaning shore anglers will be at a disadvantage as the water recedes.
Second, gear up appropriately. The removal of artificial-only regulations at Wahatoya means you can bring bait — but not live baitfish. Power Bait, worms, corn, and other standard bait options are now fair game at a water that previously required flies and lures. That opens the door for anglers who prefer spin fishing or bait casting and may have avoided Wahatoya specifically because of its gear restrictions.
Third, take the invasive species protocols seriously. Clean, drain, and dry every piece of equipment — waders, boots, nets, kayaks, float tubes — before moving it from a salvage water to any other body of water. New Zealand mudsnails and other aquatic invasive species don't respect administrative emergency declarations, and spreading them between waters would undermine whatever conservation value the salvage operations are trying to achieve.
Finally, bring a cooler. The whole point of a public fish salvage is that anglers take fish home and use them. These are wild fish from coldwater Colorado reservoirs — treat them well, handle them properly, keep them cold, and they will reward you at the table. Catch-and-release at a salvage site, while admirable in other contexts, is counterproductive here; CPW wants these fish harvested, not thrown back to face declining conditions.
A State at a Crossroads
The convergence of six or more emergency fish salvage declarations across Colorado in a single summer — from the Eastern Plains to the San Luis Valley to the northern Front Range — reflects something more systemic than bad luck. It reflects the accumulated pressure of a warming climate, reduced snowpack reliability, aging water infrastructure, and a legal framework that routinely subordinates ecological values to human water demands.
Colorado's identity as an outdoor recreation destination depends heavily on its fisheries. Fly fishing alone generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the state's economy, supporting guides, outfitters, tackle shops, hotels, and restaurants across dozens of communities. When reservoirs dry up and emergency salvages become a seasonal routine rather than a rare event, the long-term economic and ecological stakes climb accordingly.
For now, CPW is doing what it can within the tools available to it: getting anglers on the water, moving fish where possible, and working toward recovery plans for reservoirs that have a realistic shot at refilling. The salvages will mitigate fish loss by providing anglers with increased opportunity before water conditions deteriorate. That is the most honest summary of what an emergency fish salvage actually is: not a victory, not a solution, but a mitigation — the best available outcome in a situation where all the other outcomes are worse. Colorado's anglers have answered that call before, at Antero and Nee Noshe and a handful of other waters this year alone. Wahatoya, Mountain Home, and Douglas are next in line.
