Let’s Talk Stream Access

I live in Wyoming, one of the most landowner-friendly states in America. Out here, if a river flows through private land, the landowner has claim to every piece of it (water rights exempted, of course). You can float through a river that flows through private land, but even dropping anchor is considered trespassing. You’re only allowed out of your boat to portage around obstacles.

Just south of me, in Colorado, Roger Hill’s crusade for access has started anew. He reportedly told the Denver Post that he’s trying to get arrested while wading in the Arkansas River, near Cotopaxi, so that he’ll have the legal standing needed to file a lawsuit for stream access in Colorado. If you’re not familiar with Hill’s story, this news brief from Fly Fisherman Magazine is a great way to learn.

Back where I grew up in Utah, the governor (who just won re-election) and state attorney general (who didn’t run for re-election this year) are trying to wrest control of 18 million acres of land from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Utah is similarly landowner-friendly, and has a love for development that is as unbridled as any I’ve ever seen.

Idaho and Montana are the two holdouts in the West that allow for reasonable stream access. Anglers are permitted to wade through private property in those states, provided they accessed the river from public land, and don’t go outside of the river’s ordinary high-water mark while wading through private sections.

The entire concept of stream access is worth discussing, especially since it varies so widely from state to state. Do anglers really have a right to wade through rivers that flow on private land? Or is that just Idaho and Montana trying to be friendly to anglers, who provide significant amounts of tourism dollars every year?

If I had my own chunk of land with a river running through it, I’m not sure how I’d feel about letting any random angler fish there. I’ve seen how most folks trash public land, and I can’t imagine it’d be any different on private. I can see, and understand, the reticence of landowners in allowing access.

On the flip side, however, I think back to a trip about a month ago here in Wyoming. A friend called and invited me to fish a piece of private water about an hour away. This river flows almost entirely through a single ranch, and the rancher was more than happy to let us fish in exchange for a 30-pack of Coors Light. That’s a common enough transaction in Wyoming (at least, in my area) provided you’re not an out-of-stater.

I think Wyoming has a greater chance of voting for a Democrat for president than it does amending any stream access laws, and the same goes for Utah. Court precedent in Colorado may make that interesting, though, so it’s worth following Roger Hill’s case.

I’ll end with this—I’m not old, but I grew up in a time and place where a lot of landowners were happy to let you fish, so long as you didn’t make a mess, break a fence, or drive where you weren’t supposed to. That’s still possible to do today, but it’s harder for a few reasons. More people fish now than they did 15 years ago, and that inevitably means some of them won’t be as gracious to private landowners as they should. In some corners of the fishing world, I’ve encountered a bit of entitlement to fish any piece of water, an attitude that never goes over well with ranchers.

It’s worth looking at this from the landowner’s point of view, because if we’re ever going to make inroads with stream access in a place like Colorado or Wyoming, we’ve got to be willing to look at both sides.