I decided to just put this together so you get some idea how I decide where to go fishing in Colorado.

I first check the river flow conditions. While this is most important during run off. It is also helpful if your thinking of fishing a tailwater later in the summer, as big flow changes can really churn up those streams. Sometimes you can luck into some great fishing by just paying close attention this year they turned off the spigot at Windy Gap on the Upper Colorado just in time for the Salmon Fly hatch. On the day I fished the river I only saw one other fisherman, because everyone thought the river was blown out.

Next, I check the fly fishing reports from various sources. The first of course are the ones on flyfisherman.com. For some rivers I then will check specific flyshops web sites. For the Colorado near Parshall and the Blue I'll check Cutthroat Anglersand Elktrout Lodge.. Cutthroat Anglers are sometimes a bit lazy about doing a full update on the page, so sometimes its best to just call them. If you do please make sure you make some purchases from the shop (maybe not flies, but tippet etc...). Elktrout Lodge is one I've just started using. They're reports seem to be pretty good, but time will tell if they keep them updated.

For the Arkansas and Upper South Platte check out Ark Anglers. They're better for the Arkansas of course, but to be honest I don't fish the Arkansas enough to be good judge of their reports.

For the Big Thompson I would check Great Western. They have reports on all sorts of rivers, but only I find their information on other rivers, to be quite poor (end of June and they're still mentioning the Salmon Fly Hatch on the Colorado when it ended about a 2 weeks ago.)

The last fishing report I check is Division of Wildlife. Now over time I found that some of their information is worthless, but that is because they're source just sends them the same stuff each year. I don't know what to say afterwhile you just get a feel for what is worthwhile, and what is "questionable". In any case these come out every Tuesday.

Now the above only covers a small subset of Colorado, because these are the areas I fish the most often. So, I've not formed a strong opinion on the Yampa, N. Platte, Gunnison, Frying Pan, Rio Grande etc. For these you might want to check Colorado Fishing Network.