Rawhide Flyfishers

Over the past 13 years Freestone Aquatics has been the active Property and Fishery Manager for a highly coveted, destination fly-fishing ranch 35 minutes from Denver. Located on the North Fork of the South Platte River, the channel was artificially shaped to accommodate west slope water conveyance for a growing Denver Metro area, removing almost all valuable fisheries habitat. Since 2007, Freestone has designed, permitted and completed four different Restoration Projects aimed at restoring and regaining lost function and service of the Aquatic Resources and associated Wetland environments along the 3 miles of once degraded fishery. The Freestone approach included the identification of the limiting factors that could be manipulated to benefit the ecosystem. Through a multitude of studies, assessment, the Freestone design for the numerous projects produced measurable results which included, increased native and gamefish retention and recruitment, increased macroinvertebrate production, and proper sediment transport all of which were products of reconfiguration of the streambed creating proper riffle-run-pool sequencing. Currently the project reaches and property as a whole are representative of what the degraded North Fork is capable of returning to.