Walden, Colo. ? In truth, this place looks more like Wyoming than Colorado. In fact, a highway sign on the outskirts of Walden indicates the Wyoming border is just 22 miles away.

Walden is situated in a scenic basin formed by the Medicine Bow Mountain Range to the east, the Park Range to the west and the Rabbit Ears and Never Summer Ranges to the south.

The Never Summer Mountains form the western boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park. When it comes to mountain grandeur, that’s a pretty ritzy neighborhood.

Dodge Lake is in the foothills of the Medicine Bow Mountains. In late July, the hillsides were dappled with delicate wildflowers and the wind had died to a whisper. The mirror-calm surface of the 21/2-acre reservoir was dimpled with the pockmarks of rising trout. Best of all, the late-afternoon temperature peaked at about 85 degrees.

Pat Stefanek was smiling to himself when he tied a No. 18 calibaetis dry fly onto the 5-pound fly-rod tippet and handed me the rod. To me, the fly resembled a tiny, brown bit of pocket lint. Luckily, trout were dimpling the surface in easy casting range, and I laid the fluff about 10 yards from the bank and kept my eyes locked on the minute speck.

A golden eagle called as it rode the afternoon thermals, but I kept my eyes locked on the tiny fly. The surface bulged and the broad, silver nose of a trout rose as if in slow motion and came down on the spot where my fly had been resting. I gingerly lifted the rod and spent about 30 seconds connected to a very powerful trout that basically ran wherever it wanted until it angrily shook its head and snapped the thin leader.

“They’re unforgiving,” said Stefanek with a chuckle. “We’ve got some triploid rainbows in this lake that never try to reproduce. They’re eating machines and they get pretty big. That one acted like a big fish.”

Stefanek replaced the little dry fly, and I cast it back onto Dodge Lake’s glassy surface. This time, the fly lasted about 15 seconds before an 18-inch rainbow rose and ate it.

Across a narrow finger of the lake, my wife, Emilie, a beginning fly-fisher, was fast to a 20-inch trout that had taken her dry fly. I stopped fishing to photograph Emilie’s catch. She landed the fish, then caught another solid rainbow before the wind began to rise from a late-afternoon thunderstorm.

Whether the wind blew our hatch away or just made our flies difficult for fish to see is hard to say. The fish suddenly stopped biting. It was OK with Emilie. In a memorable day of fishing three different lakes and one small river, she had landed more trout than she had caught in a week of fishing public waters in central Colorado just a month earlier.

My catch for the day totaled 14 trout, a mixed bag of browns and rainbows. Not counting small trout we caught on the miniscule Canadian River, the average fish measured about 17 or 18 inches.

Stefanek is the river keeper for the North Park Fishing Club. NPFC controls access to more than 66,000 deeded acres, three lakes and 47 miles of rivers around Walden. Though NPFC was set up as a membership-only fishing club, Stefanek will soon offer destination fishing trips that include food, lodging and guides on private water.

“The club is catch-and-release only,” said Stefanek. “We don’t take any fish from the club waters, and they’re loaded with trout. On a good fishing day, it’s not uncommon to catch 20 to 30 fish. The best part is that you seldom see another fisherman. In fact, you’re more likely to see elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope or golden eagles than other anglers.”

While Colorado is wealthy in public fishing access, few public areas compare with private waters. Because the fish are plentiful and lightly fished, you don’t have to be an expert to catch them.

Walden is about an hour’s drive northeast of Steamboat Springs, 150 miles west of Denver. The club properties include several houses that are available to members.