The Fishability Score
Every scored river gets a number from 0 to 100. It is a relative measure — it answers “which of these is the best use of my evening?”, not “is this river easy?” A 92 beats a 70 badly enough to justify an extra half hour in the truck; two rivers within a few points of each other are a coin flip, so pick the closer one.
80–100 · Fishing Well
Fish are active and the conditions line up. Go.
60–79 · Fair / Picky
Very catchable, but often skinny or off-temp — match the hatch tighter and fish with precision. Worth it most when it's close.
40–59 · Tough
Too warm, too low or too high to fish well. Spend the evening elsewhere if you can.
Below 40 · Blown out
Blown out or barely flowing. Pick another river.
What goes into it
- Flow against that river's own ideal range — 300 cfs is perfect on one river and unfishable on another, so every river is judged against its own window, never a blanket number.
- Water temperature, which drives whether trout are feeding at all.
That is the whole number today. Season and hatch stage, the weather forecast and fly-shop reports are shown beside the score, not inside it, until each has a live source we can score honestly.
The score is recalculated from live USGS readings, not typed in by hand. A reading older than 4 hours doesn't count, and nothing is filled in to replace it — a river with no live flow or water temperature gets no score.
The Fishing Report — every river
Everything below is Pro. Without Pro you can take the free tour: the demo video and a sample Fishing Report for one river, Blue River.
52 rivers, ranked live
27 rivers have an ideal-flow range written; each is scored and sorted best-first whenever USGS has a live flow and water temperature for it. The rest show live gauge data only — we don't invent a score. 48 pull live readings straight from USGS gauges. Set your home town and every river shows its distance from you.
31 fly shops, cited
Real shop reports with the shop named and linked. Fly names are passed through exactly as the shop wrote them — no renaming, no “did you mean”. If a shop says Barr's Emerger #20, that's what you read.
Live 5-day forecasts
NOAA/NWS forecasts for seven fishing pockets around the Front Range and high country — highs, lows, and chance of precipitation, with a link to the full point forecast.
Morning, afternoon, evening flies
Scored rivers carry what to throw in each window, plus the rig and a seasonal strategy read — not a generic fly of the month.
Add any river you like
Search any USGS gauge in the state and pin it to your dashboard with live flow and temperature. The seeded list is a starting point, not a limit.
My Rivers
Star the water you actually fish and it floats to the top of your list.
Ask Cody — your AI fishing expert
Cody reads the same live dashboard you do and answers in plain language. Ask him where to fish inside an hour's drive, what to throw at Deckers right now, or how to rig for a cold tailwater — and he answers from today's numbers.
Cheesman Canyon — hands down your best bet right now.
Why: It's 78 miles (1h 50m), just over your window, but worth the drive. Fishability is 92, flows are solid at 295 cfs, and water temp is a cool 47°F.
If you want to stay under 1 hour: Clear Creek (35m, 92 fishability) or St. Vrain Creek (45m, 89).
Note what he did there: he recommended a river, then caught that it broke the one-hour limit, said so, and offered closer options. Cody is instructed never to invent a flow, a temperature or a shop report — if the data isn't there, he says so.
Recorded in August 2026, when drive times were measured from Brighton. Hatchwise now covers the whole state, so Cody asks where you're starting from before he ranks anything by distance.
Catch log — live now
The catch log is part of Pro. The trip planner and a map of your catches are still in development and aren't included yet.
Catch log (Pro — live)
One tap marks the spot, even with no signal. Add species, the fly (in your own words), rig, notes and up to three photos, now or later. It syncs when you're back in range, tagged with the nearest river and a snapshot of the live gauge reading and NWS forecast.
AI Trip Planner (in development)
The plan: combine the forecast and live flows — and, once you're logging, your own spots — into a suggestion for where to go next.
Ready to stop guessing?
Pro is the Fishing Report for every river, Ask Cody — your AI fishing expert — and the catch log — $14.99/month or $129/year. The trip planner is coming next and isn't included yet.
Cancel any time. If it doesn't make your next trip better, email us within 30 days for a full refund.