Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area

by Christopher Kolomitz

Mountain Mail, Salida
Stretching nearly 150 miles from Leadville to Cañon City,

the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area delivers anglers a truly wild white water and flat water experience.

Managed through agreements with Colorado State Parks, Colorado Division of Wildlife, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the AHRA includes 28 developed recreation sites and numerous non-fee recreation access points.

In summer 2005 228,091 people rafted the river on 42,517 commercial rafts, according to a AHRA study. That represents a 12 percent increase in the number of people using the river compared to 2004.

Some of that increase was recorded in a section of river between Salida and Vallie Bridge, where float trips have become popular in the flat water. Use there was up about 900 boaters, the study reported.

While such numbers of boaters may sound daunting to the fly angler in search of trout and solitude, the vast majority of commercial boating takes place on a few key sections of the Arkansas and the industry is closely regulated on other sections of the river to protect the fishing experience.

If you plan to fish the river during the primary summer vacation period (mid-June to mid-August), avoiding the rafting crowds is an important consideration. Above Fishermans Bridge upstream of Browns Canyon, rafting traffic is minimal, particularly afternoons. The Browns Canyon run, from Fishermans Bridge to Stone Bridge, is very busy with commercial raft trips during the summer, particularly on weekends. If you want to fish the Canyon, or the excellent water above it, wait until after 4 p.m. when the raft traffic normally clears out.

Below Browns Canyon, from Stone Bridge all the way to Pinnacle Rock (some 50 miles of river), commercial raft traffic is light. This is because the gradient and technicality of the river through this reach is not challenging enough to produce a significant number of exciting rapids.

But that gradient makes for some great float trips, as is evident in the number of local anglers who use their boats to float the section of river from Big Bend to Salida or all the way to Vallie Bridge.

During the period outside of high water, regulations call for no more than 10 commercial boats (raft trips, kayak instruction and float fishing trips) passing any one point each day between Big Bend and Texas Creek.

Regs also require that all non-fishing commercial boats be off the river by 5 p.m. Below Pinnacle Rock, raft traffic increases thanks to rapids in Parkdale and Royal Gorge. However, since the water is generally warmer at this lower end of the river, evening fishing is often the best mid-summer option through this reach anyway.

While use of the developed sites frequently requires a fee (look for the entrance signs and fee tubes), no permits or fees are required outside of these sites.

Public access outside of developed areas is marked, look for brown signs explaining where public and private land begins.

Established in the late 1980s in response to increasing recreational pressure on the resource, the AHRA has been responsible for a vast increase in public access on the river. That increase has been greatly augmented by the works of a partner agency, the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

The DOW has developed leases of private lands for public fishing access and the establishment of State Wildlife Areas within the AHRA opened up even more access.