Colorado’s trout fisheries could face a difficult summer, impacting the state’s billion-dollar angling industry, as widespread drought conditions drive predictions that streamflows will be well below-average.

Kirk Klancke, the president of the Colorado Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited, said he is concerned that the drought will stress fisheries this summer, especially if temperatures are anywhere near as elevated as they were this winter.

“If this summer is anything like this past winter was, the chances are pretty good that there’s going to be fish kills in our streams,” Klancke said. “It’s 100% given that, without some miracle monsoon season, we’re going to see (river) temperatures that threaten trout — and fishermen who care will be fishing in the mornings.”

Colorado, and much of the West, experienced one of the hottest, driest winters on record. In March, a climate change-fueled heatwave rapidly melted off the state’s already historically poor snowpack to record-low levels. With little snow left to melt, only about half the normal amount of water is expected to flow through most rivers this summer, and some rivers could see closer to a quarter of the normal flows, according to the latest Colorado Water Supply Outlook report.

Colorado’s angling industry generates nearly $2 billion in total economic output annually and supports over 15,000 jobs statewide, according to the state government. The state has 6,000 miles of streams, including over 360 miles that Colorado Parks and Wildlife has designated as Gold Medal trout fishing, and more than 1,300 lakes and reservoirs. Fly fishing, especially for rainbow and brown trout, is among the most popular forms of fishing in the state.

While every summer has its “ebbs and flows,” Patrick Gamble, a fly fishing guide for Straightline Sports in Steamboat Springs, said anyone visiting Colorado to fish this summer should expect the experience to be a little different that past years.

With the low flows, Gamble said he’s already called a number of his customers who had booked June trips on the Yampa River to reschedule for earlier in the spring, since he doesn’t expect the river to flow later in the summer. As temperatures get hotter heading into the summer, he said anglers should also plan to fish in the cool of mornings, rather than on hot afternoons, or at higher elevations to avoid harming trout populations.

“This year, when you have less water, there’s still as much pressure — just as many eagles, ospreys, more river otters than ever and angling pressure to boot,” Gamble said. “Coming off the lowest snowpack in recorded history, it’s definitely super concerning.”

Drought likely to stress trout populations

With most of Colorado’s rivers expected to experience extremely low streamflows, Klancke said, “we’re really worried this year is going to be really hard to keep fish alive,” especially if there are above-normal temperatures.

When rivers run low, the water is spread thin and warms faster, Klancke explained. That is a problem because hot water holds less dissolved oxygen, which cold-water species like trout — the primary targets of Colorado’s angling industry — need to breathe, he said.

“Your river is built like a solar collector,” Klancke said. “When your flows are depleted, it’s the same width of streambed, but the river spreads out over that width, and it’s very shallow. The rocks collect the heat because they are exposed when the river is shallow. That heats up the river.”

When water temperatures approach 71 degrees Fahrenheit, Colorado Parks and Wildlife public information officer Rachael Gonzales said trout become stressed and will feed less. If conditions are severe enough, Gonzales said the state wildlife agency can issue voluntary or mandatory closures of certain stretches of river. She said aquatic biologists are monitoring the rivers and will determine if actions are needed this summer.

Trout Unlimited and most Colorado fly fishing outfitters recommend anglers stop fishing for trout when water temperatures hit 68 degrees, so as not to harm the fish. Even during a year with a normal snowpack, Klancke said that some streams hit this threshold several days a year.

“At 68 degrees, we tell people to just quit fishing because you can catch a fish and have all the thrill of playing him, getting him in a net, releasing him properly, but when he swims away, he’s expended so much energy he can’t recover,” he said. “At 68 degrees, it really becomes catch and kill, instead of catch and release.”

Anglers stress ethical fishing during drought year

While anglers hope the period of wetter, cooler weather Colorado has seen over the last couple of weeks continues, long-term forecasts suggest the West could be in for a hot summer.

Over the next three months, western Colorado is likely to see above-normal temperatures and average to slightly-below average precipitation, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.

“The most important message for this summer is, if you’re a catch-and-release fisherman, fish with a thermometer and know what temperatures threaten trout,” Klancke said. “It’s not just water conservation in a drought year, it’s how we handle our fisheries and keep these fish alive.”

Across Colorado, Trout Unlimited and other conservation groups are working to educate visitors about the drought conditions and how hot water can impact trout. This summer, Klancke said the Colorado Headwaters Chapter will launch into “high gear” radio and newspaper education campaigns and volunteers leaving flyers under the windshields of vehicles parked along rivers in Grand County on hot days.

The warmer it gets this summer, the fewer “easy-access” trout fishing locations there will be in the lower Yampa Valley, Gamble said. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any fishing; it just means anglers may have to move to higher elevations, where temperatures are cooler.

“Being trout-centric in the state of Colorado, you definitely epitomize a hot summer day with a dry fly and searching a river bank with a grasshopper fly,” Gamble added. “But, sometimes that just means you need to be up at 9,000 feet, instead of down at a valley floor at 7,000 feet, to find water that releasing a trout in is ethical.”

Gonzales said that in addition to starting early and avoiding warm water, it is also important to not overcrowd an area. She suggested anglers also target warm-water species of fish, like pike, which face fewer impacts during hot weather. 

Because the vast majority of Colorado’s fly fishing guides are ethical anglers and won’t fish in conditions that stress fish, Klancke said many fly fishing guides may work mornings only on hot days. If this summer sees extended periods of warmth, he said that could have ripple effects across the industry.

“This is particularly hard on our guides because our guides now are going to half day,” he said. “Think about it — they’re going to have their income cut in half. … To have your work hours cut in half is just really hard on professional guides.”

BROOMFIELD, Colo.—Colorado’s top wildfire officials said they expect a significantly increased risk of wildfire this summer—and while they’ll partner with neighboring states as much as they can, resources for fighting the blazes will be tested. 

A dismal snowpack this winter is likely to leave a parched landscape and tinderbox conditions from Colorado’s thickly forested ski mountains to its grassy eastern plains. Officials here are anticipating an exceptionally dire next few months in their state and beyond. 

“The increased fire risk extends to the multi-state region,” Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, said during the state’s annual wildfire outlook briefing in Broomfield on April 30, where officials laid out Colorado’s 2026 Wildfire Preparedness Plan. 

The upcoming summer will be challenging across the West, he said, with an “elevated fire risk” threatening Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, alongside Colorado. 

Strained Resources Across the West

Surrounded by the state’s top fire managers on Thursday, Polis said Colorado has state-of-the-art assets to fight and prevent fires from the air and ground. 

Such resources have increased in the two terms since he took office, said the outgoing, term-limited governor in his final fire briefing. Three of the largest fires in the state’s history raged during his eight years in office, he said, including the late-December grass-fueled Marshall Fire in 2021 that burned more than 1,000 homes in a Boulder suburb. 

“We have two state-owned multimission aircraft,” Polis said. “We have single-engine tankers, we have leased large air tankers, we own type 1 and type 2 helicopters for rapid response, multiple engines, multiple hand crews and more intelligence—both satellite-based and aerial-based—than ever before. While the risks have increased, our preparedness has grown exponentially.” 

As for helping other Western states with its unique backbone of resources, Polis said he would consider it on a case-by-case basis, but the priority will be within Colorado’s own borders. 

“The advantage of being able to control the resources is that we want to be able to have rapid response here,” he said. “And we don’t want to sacrifice that.”

The state’s increased wildfire risk stems from the impacts of climate change, drought and a growing population, which has led people to move further into the Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI, where homes and communities abut flammable wild landscapes, Polis said. 

Matt McCombs, who leads Colorado’s State Forest Service, said more than half of Colorado residents live in the WUI. “Ultimately, Coloradans know—we all understand—we have to learn to live with wildland fire,” he said. 

So far this year, 24,222 fires have burned nearly two million acres across the country, significantly surpassing the 10-year average for acreage burned by this time of year. In an average year, Colorado sees between 6,000 and 7,000 wildfires. Its largest fires are human-caused and the origins of many of them are unknown.

In Colorado, during the first 117 days of 2026, the state dropped more than 200,000 gallons of water and fire retardant from the air on over 50 days of flight missions, said Stan Hilkey, the director of the state’s Department of Public Safety. 

“We are facing a very challenging fire year where our resources will be tested across not only Colorado but across the West,” said Michael Morgan, director of the state’s Division of Fire Prevention & Control. 

Federal Friction

At the federal level, the Departments of Interior and Agriculture have announced a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. 

Inside Climate News has previously reported that layoffs, confusion and budget cuts have sparked doubts about the agency. 

Paul Hohn, the geographic area fire chief for the Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, said on Thursday that the agency has the same amount of staffing that it had last year in what he called the “legacy” bureaus.

“I know that some federal agencies went through some deferred resignation programs and there were some positions that were not allowed to be rehired over the last couple years,” he said. “That has not applied to firefighters and fire support personnel.”

As Colorado prepares and coordinates its response for a potentially devastating summer, state officials have dealt with friction with the federal government under the new administration of Republican President Donald Trump. 

Earlier this month, Polis criticized the feds for denying his appeals to declare two wildfires as major disasters. He said such actions make the recovery process harder, slower and more difficult. 

“We hope that that federal partnership comes back with disasters that we’ve counted on for years,” he said. “If that’s going away, as it seems to be with the denial—not just of Colorado’s but a number of disaster declarations—that would fundamentally change the nature of the federal relationship with the states. And it would hurt fire preparedness and recovery across all fifty states.”

Last week, Colorado’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, introduced legislation, the “Disaster Declaration Transparency Act of 2026,” that would allow Congress to override the president’s denial of disaster declarations.

The FEMA press office declined to comment on the bill. 

“Rapid, Aggressive Initial Attack”

Days before Colorado’s annual fire briefing, two of the state’s former governors authored a provocative guest column in The Denver Post.

In it, Democrat Bill Ritter and Republican Bill Owens castigated unnamed “loud voices” opposed to forest management, such as strategic thinning, fuel reduction, clearing and prescribed burns when appropriate. 

“Colorado needs a more mature conversation, especially as we deal with prolonged drought, warming temperatures, pine and Ponderosa beetles, and other threats to forest health,” they wrote. “Stewardship is not abuse. Forest management is not the enemy of healthy ecosystems. If anything, refusing to use proven tools in fire-prone landscapes is its own kind of recklessness.” 

Coloradans, the former governors said, “deserve better than another season of hand-wringing followed by disaster. They deserve leaders willing to act before the emergency, not just speak solemnly after it.” 

Polis said in an interview on Thursday that he had not yet read the column, but stressed that his state is “light years” ahead of where it was a decade ago. “I’m very confident in saying we are better prepared with more resources than Colorado has ever had before for fires,” he said.

In recent decades, the U.S. Forest Service has backed away from the aggressive suppression tactics of its 1935 “10 a.m. policy,” which aimed to prevent catastrophes by putting out fires as quickly as possible. 

That policy continued until the early 1970s, when scientific research increasingly demonstrated the positive effects of fire in forest ecology and suggested that suppression makes wildfires that survive initial attack more severe. Allowing wildfires to burn safely has been a critical tool to address the growing crisis. 

At Thursday’s briefing, Morgan, Colorado’s fire czar, said most of the state’s strategies this year will focus on “rapid, aggressive initial attack” to keep fires from growing. 

“Every ignition we can stop, that’s one less stressed-out, overworked firefighter,” Morgan said.

Polis has declared May as Wildfire Awareness Month and urged Coloradans to do their part. 

With a demanding fire season on the horizon, officials emphasized the need to reduce pressure on firefighters where possible. Hilkey, the public safety director, asked citizens to step up by making fire awareness a part of their everyday life. 

“We want to make sure everybody starts thinking like a firefighter,” he said. 

In the meantime, McCombs, of Colorado’s State Forest Service, stressed the importance of mitigation work that reduces burnable fuel to stop fires from turning into the kinds of devastating out-of-control blazes that have turned large areas into hellscapes and burned thousands of homes.

That and other investments, such as home-hardening, might not make headlines, he said, but they pay off in prevention.

On Thursday, Polis acknowledged that in Colorado, the process of prescribed burning for mitigation can require extensive documentation, preparation and assessment of various environmental conditions. And he signaled an appetite for potentially lessening some of the bureaucracy involved, saying it “sounds like an awful lot of paperwork.”

While Colorado’s top fire officials predicted a doozie of a year, they said there is only so much the state can do in response. The real work begins at the individual level. 

“Doing your part to protect your home, protect your community, prevent fires from starting in the form of fuels treatments, resiliency of your own home, and any place you can,” Morgan said. “That’s what’s going to make the difference in the short term and the long haul for the future of Colorado and across our West.” 

Nolan Diffley, Aeva Dye, Anna Hay, Shaden Higgs, Corey Hutchins, Rowan Keller, Sol Lorio, Rachel Phillips, Josefina Rodriguez-Poggio and Amelia Vinton contributed to this report as students and staff in the Colorado College Career Catalyst Block “Burning Questions: Wildfire Journalism & Ecology at Colorado Firecamp.”

A 5-year-old New Mexico girl survived more than 30 hours trapped in a truck that crashed and killed her parents on May 1 in southern Colorado, according to first responders.

The Upper Pine River Fire Protection called it “both a tragedy and a miracle” for the girl in a Facebook post.

The vehicle was not discovered until May 2, according to a Colorado State Patrol news release. Police believed the blue Chevrolet S-10 pickup went off the south shoulder of Highway 160 near milepost 104, just east of Bayfield, around 6 a.m. on May 1, rolled over an unknown number of times and came to rest on its roof.

CSP said three occupants were in the truck. Devante Griffin, 25, the driver, and Klariza Tarango, 24, both of Farmington, New Mexico, were pronounced dead at the scene. A 5-year-old girl, identified in media reports as their daughter. was taken to an area hospital for injuries and has been released to family.

What caused the crash?

Colorado State Patrol were still investigating the accident on May 5. A news release said “impairment and excessive speed are not being investigated as factors leading to this crash” at this time.

It also said no charges are expected to be filed in the case.

Why did nobody see the truck sooner?

CSP said in the release that the location was not visible from the road.

Nate Trela covers trending news in Colorado and Utah for the USA TODAY Network.