This $6 Million Compound in Colorado Is a Fly Fisher’s Paradise

Robert Sinclair was in his early 30s when he began looking for a property out West. “I was starting a family and was looking for a place to go fishing and get out of the Texas heat,” says Sinclair, the owner of Castleton Energy Corp., an oil and gas investment company. Montana was an obvious choice, but when he discovered the state was changing its stream access laws (which dictated who could have access to a river, and when), he began to look in Colorado. “It’s one of the few places where private water property is, in fact, private,” he says. “If you own both sides of a river, you can fence it off if you want.”

Soon after, Sinclair came across just such a property during a summer bike ride. About 30 miles from Telluride, the 318-acre parcel hugs the San Miguel River for more than three miles. “I grabbed my rod, went down, and caught a few fish,” he recalls. “The only thing on it was an old barn, an electric line that ran across the property, and a gravel pit.” After conducting some water tests and what Sinclair called “minor due diligence,” he determined the river had an ample stock of fish in need of minor improvements, at most. “Something as basic as [instituting a policy of] catch and release” for visitors, he says. After a bit of negotiation, he bought the property in 1986 for $356,000.