Colorado Parks and Wildlife relocated over 1,000 trout to Eleven Mile and the South Fork South Platte River last week as Denver Water’s drawdown of Antero entered its second month, with no refill date on the calendar.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatic biologists used electrofishing to capture more than 1,000 trout from Antero Reservoir and moved rainbow, brown, cutthroat, and hybrid fish to both Eleven Mile Reservoir and the South Fork South Platte River. CPW selected Eleven Mile to keep the relocated trout inside the South Platte system and because the lake is clean of New Zealand mudsnails, the aquatic nuisance species that has tested positive at Antero.
A Multi-Stage Salvage Effort
The agency-led operation answered a question CPW left open in April, when Senior Aquatic Biologist Kyle Battige said the agency was evaluating “the feasibility of CPW-led salvage efforts”. Battige said the agency was “able to move 981 fish over to Eleven Mile State Park,” and credited “thousands of anglers” who participated in the public salvage that ran from April 21 through May 13, when CPW lifted all bag and possession limits at Antero. Denver Water’s Manager of Water Supply, Nathan Elder, told Denver7 the agencies planned multiple salvage passes at different drawdown levels, with fish moved downstream to Spinney Mountain Reservoir as well as Eleven Mile.
Denver Water officially closed Antero on May 13 and ramped up the drawdown the following day, with the transfer to Cheesman Reservoir running over several weeks. Elder said the utility expects to move about 18,000 acre-feet to Cheesman, enough to supply 54,000 to 72,000 households for a year, and that the transfer will save roughly 5,000 acre-feet of evaporation, equal to about 25 percent of Antero’s storage capacity. Elder also told Denver7 that the 2026 drawdown is “shaping up to be much worse” than the 2002 drawdown that left Antero dry until 2007, citing this winter’s snowpack, or lack there of. CPW says it will not resume stocking Antero until the reservoir refills, and no refill date has been set.
For Anglers, No Refill Date Yet
For the outfitters who built businesses around the water, the closure was abrupt. Travis Sawyer, co-owner of Kindred Anglers and a longtime Antero guide, told Denver7 the lack of advance notice was the hardest part. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to protect these fish out here,” he said.
The Antero salvage runs alongside a wider Western drought response, with emergency salvages and lifted bag limits at reservoirs in Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and Idaho.
Antero itself is closed to anglers for 2026, with no refill date. But the trout that grew there are still catchable. Eleven Mile, Spinney Mountain, and the South Fork now hold them, all on the same river.
