The first time I visited Vail, Colorado, I met a fly-fishing guide who pulled up his sleeve, exposing a 6-inch cut on his forearm just above the wrist. He had been guiding earlier that week, and while he was on a bridge spotting fish for his client, an out-of-control skier ran over him. It took a bunch of stitches to sew the guide back together.

That's not a story you're likely to hear on many trout streams, but it illustrates how the great fishing on Colorado's Eagle River and its tributary Gore Creek is intertwined with the state's most popular ski resort community. The high-mountain snowpack that provides moguls and powder for skiers creates a cold, clear wild-trout fishery with good fishing year-round.

While swank hotels and multi-million-dollar homes along the river don't provide a wilderness setting, they're a big step up from the mining industries of a few decades ago that scarred the upper Eagle River's landscape and leaked heavy metals and toxins into the river. The Vail area is thriving now, and the trout fishing keeps getting better. Despite rapid growth in the river valley over the last decade, fish populations and sizes have increased steadily.

The Gilman Mine site, which once poured orange sludge into the Eagle near Minturn, is now a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund Site with a wastewater treatment plant. The contaminants in the river are slowly dissipating. Suburban sprawl is now the most immediate threat to the watershed, and a variety of well-funded organizations (Eagle River Watershed Council, Trout Unlimited) are committed to keeping the river healthy.