Eleven Mile Reservoir

Overview

Eleven Mile Reservoir is the 3,405-acre lake behind Eleven Mile Canyon Dam on the South Platte River, at about 8,600 feet on the southern edge of South Park, and the centerpiece of Eleven Mile State Park. Water comes down from Spinney Mountain Reservoir through the Dream Stream, the short stretch of South Platte between the two lakes, and leaves through Eleven Mile Canyon below the dam. The fishery is broader than Spinney's: rainbow, brown, cutthroat and cutbow trout, northern pike, kokanee salmon and a large population of carp in the shallow bays. There are no lake trout here. The reservoir is open year round and ice fishes hard from roughly December through February, then fishes best from ice-out in April into June and again in September and October as the water cools. Chironomids catch fish from opening week on, scuds are in the diet all season, Callibaetis and damsels run June through August, and leeches work any month the water is open. Pike are the sleeper fly-rod target on big streamers along the weed edges in early summer. Kokanee are present but snagging is prohibited here, unlike at some Colorado reservoirs, and fishing within 100 feet of the inlet is flies and lures only and catch and release. A buoy line closes the water near the dam. Three ramps serve the lake, two at North Shore and one at Witcher's Cove, and this is big open water: wind and fast-rising storms are the main hazard.