Jelm and Woods Landing, where the canyon still has riffles
The Laramie heads in the Colorado mountains, runs north into Wyoming along the east side of the Medicine Bow Mountains past Jelm and Woods Landing, and leaves the hills about 22 miles southwest of town. That canyon stretch is the quickest water on the river. Four Seasons Anglers in Laramie calls the Jelm access the most scenic public reach: pocket water, riffles and undercut banks, best from mid May into early July and again in fall. It is 30 miles out, west on Highway 230 and then south on Highway 10 at Woods Landing.
Jelm is a Game and Fish habitat unit of about 1,098 acres. Walk-in access follows the bank upstream from the south parking lot and stays 50 feet above high water at the north lot; you may camp up to five days at the upriver lot but not at the northern one, and the road is not plowed in winter. Woods Landing Public Access Area, 24 miles out where Highways 230 and 10 meet, is a single WYDOT right-of-way parking area that doubles as a boat launch, with no camping or fires.
Pioneer Canal and Monolith on the open plains
Out of the mountains the river slows into cottonwood-lined pasture. The Pioneer Canal access, about 20 miles west of Laramie on Highway 230, is roughly half a mile of long, deep runs that the Four Seasons crew likes for dry flies from early June through July. Closer in, Monolith Public Access Area sits 2 miles southwest of Laramie on 230 and gives more than 3 miles of bank under an agreement between Game and Fish and the city, with one parking lot and an accessible outhouse. Expect flat, slow water with a few deep runs and mostly brown trout.
The shop's own description of the river is candid: wild browns of 10 to 16 inches are the norm, and the fish that run past 10 pounds live in the pastures just west of town, which are mostly private. Skip the wide shallow flats and work riffles, holes and cut banks.
Trout inside city limits: the Greenbelt
Laramie's paved Greenbelt Trail follows the river for 6 miles through town, and the city allows fishing along it with a Wyoming license. Optimist Park on West Garfield Street has the big parking lot and rock steps to the water; the Spruce Street end has footbridges; Commerce Drive is the West Laramie entrance, where the land around the south loop is private. Where the trail passes the Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site you also need a state park day-use permit, sold at the prison.
The Laramie Rivers Conservation District rebuilt banks along this stretch from 2009 to 2011, anchoring root wads that now hold fish. Four Seasons, whose shop is at 334 South Fillmore just off I-80 exit 311, reports browns of 10 to 20 inches here plus stocked catchable rainbows, and calls it good streamer and hopper water right after runoff and in fall.
Why the town gauge can read near zero
USGS 06660000 sits in Laramie, below every canal that takes water between Woods Landing and town, and in dry summers it shows how much is left. Its record since 1933 averages 524 cfs in June, 104 in July, 36 in August and only 18 in September, before climbing back to 46 in October once irrigation eases. The old gauge up at Woods Landing, which measured river and Pioneer Canal together until 2016, averaged 202 cfs in July and 60 in September, roughly double and triple what arrives in town. Colorado also diverts headwater flow to the Cache la Poudre through the Laramie-Poudre Tunnel, finished in 1911.
2026 has been extreme. Game and Fish reported the Laramie Basin snowpack at 12 percent of average in late April, runoff at the town gauge peaked at a daily mean of 124 cfs on May 23, and the daily flow fell to 1.58 cfs on August 28. It read 15.8 cfs on September 24. No shop publishes a flow range for this gauge, so the 46-104 cfs band here is the USGS October and July means; it brackets the spring and fall months the shop recommends. Well below it, the upstream accesses are the better bet.
Area 5 rules, and the Wheatland reservoirs downstream
The Laramie has no special listing in the 2026 Area 5 regulations, so the drainage limits apply: three trout a day from streams with only one over 16 inches, six trout total across streams and lakes, and 16 brook trout. The season is open all year. Live baitfish are illegal in Area 5 except on listed waters, and the upper Laramie is not one of them. Wyoming prohibits possessing rusty crayfish, which were illegally introduced into the Laramie drainage and which Game and Fish asks anglers to report to the Laramie office (307-745-4046); they threaten the hornyhead chub, found in Wyoming only in this drainage.
Below the plains the river feeds the Wheatland Irrigation District reservoirs. Wheatland Reservoir No. 3 covers over 4,700 acres when full and is stocked with rainbows and browns, but New Zealand mudsnails were confirmed there in 2025, so clean, drain and dry waders before moving to the river. Watercraft are banned on the No. 3 canal from Reservoir No. 2. In hot spells Game and Fish asks you to stop releasing trout once water hits 70 degrees.
Crayfish, leeches and the summer mayflies
Four Seasons' current Big Laramie list leans on subsurface food: UV and PS leeches, beadhead Pheasant Tails and Princes, Pat's Rubber Legs, San Juan and Squirmy worms, RS2s, and crayfish and streamer patterns such as the Snapping Craw and Thin Mint. The shop's hatch chart for the nearby upper North Platte shows olives in spring and fall, Pale Morning Duns June through September, caddis May through October and hoppers from June.