When Chuck Obermeyer started this Don Quixote business on the lower Blue River, there was just him and a few thousand hefty trout.

Now, after three years of tireless tilting, the fly-fishing activist from Highlands Ranch might have preserved quality fishing for all of us on a lonely river reach that seems destined to become one of Colorado's busiest.

"It is the best brown trout fishery in the state. Absolutely." Obermeyer said of the Blue River below Green Mountain Dam.

On Thursday, state wildlife commissioners agreed with him and a legion of supporters that utmost conservative fish limits are needed to protect trout in the lower 15 miles of the Blue River.

Starting May 1, catch-and-release will rule from Green Mountain Dam to the Colorado River, replacing the daily limit of two trout longer than 16 inches. Flies- and-lures regulations already are in place.

The commissioners' action could save the lower Blue's exceptional fishery from plunder, in light of an imminent land swap that will bring three miles of river below the dam and nearly two miles of river near the confluence with the Colorado River into the public domain.

The Bureau of Land Management is giving final consideration to the swap with the Blue Valley Ranch. All that remains is for the BLM to sign off on an environmental impact study. The land exchange could be approved in a year or so.

"When this exchange comes to fruition, it's going to open this place up to enormous fishing pressure," said Obermeyer, who has enjoyed fishing the stretch for years with permission from Blue Valley Ranch.

Obermeyer also has been a leading booster for the land swap, even though he knew it will end his peaceful fishing reveries.

"But I had a heck of a time getting anyone to recognize that this was a great fishery and that it needed protection," he said.

He wrote hundreds of letters and finally assembled some weighty backers. On Thursday, support for catch-and-release came from the Summit County Commission, Colorado Division of Wildlife, Trout Unlimited and a petition signed by 125 residents of two housing developments along the lower Blue.

"I loaded the cannons," he said. "But it was a long process. I guess it was about 98 percent my effort."

The timing of the new fishing rule, and others the Wildlife Commission approved Thursday, was a rare exception to a policy that calls for changes to be made in five-year increments. The Division of Wildlife set new fishing regulations in 2005 and wasn't scheduled to modify them again until 2010.

"Previously, they refused to review the regs until 2010," Obermeyer said. "Well, by 2010, the river would be wiped out.

"Just getting them to take a look at something out of their normal sequence was a difficult proposition."

Obermeyer credits John Bredehoff, the wildlife division's assistant director, for listening and backing the regulation change before the land swap goes into effect.

"The division taking a strong stand is what made this happen," Obermeyer said.

It didn't hurt that one dedicated fly fisher saw the writing on the canyon walls and took to jousting with windmills at the expense of his own solitude.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com