The fight for public freedom to wade in Colorado rivers is getting gnarlier, with fishermen mulling civil disobedience, following a high court ruling this month that, if judges stand by it on Friday, bolsters the state’s position that riverbeds can be private property.
For a decade, this confrontation over who can fish where has revolved around longtime angling ace Roger Hill, 81, a retired Cold War-era physicist from Colorado Springs (his work helped in making nuclear missiles), who had rocks thrown at him as he was casting for trout, catch-and-release, along his favorite stretch of the Arkansas River near Cotopaxi. The owners of land adjacent to the river forced him to leave. He filed a lawsuit claiming a right, as a member of the public, to wade on the bottom of the river. He pressed this case, and won, until Colorado’s attorney general, with legal support from landowners, appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court and prevailed.
The high court judges, in a unanimous ruling on June 5, relied on a legal technicality to block anglers from challenging Colorado’s approach of allowing private control over riverbeds — which looms as an increasingly vexing matter as more wealthy outsiders buy up prime property along rivers. The judges said Hill lacked legal standing and dismissed his lawsuit.
