River reaches immediately downstream of dams (i.e. tailwaters) often provide ideal conditions to support cold-water sport fisheries that generate millions of dollars for local and regional economies. Despite their societal importance, these highly-managed environments are threatened by many global change drivers including a hotter and drier climate, changing water storage decisions in upstream reservoirs, and alterations to the prey base. Quantifying how these drivers interact to influence performance of cold-water fish is thus crucial for informing management of these highly valued fisheries moving forward. To address this, we first parameterized drift foraging-bioenergetics models developed for Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) using present-day estimates of temperature and invertebrate drift collected at 20 tailwater reaches throughout the upper Colorado River Basin. We then explored the influence of temperature and prey characteristics on trout performance (growth rate and body size) by constructing scenarios that altered the magnitude of daily temperatures, the seasonal timing of thermal regimes, the amount of invertebrate prey biomass, and invertebrate prey size structure. Our results show that increases in temperature are a major lever on trout performance, but such responses were context dependent and were modified by prey availability. Additionally, shifts in the seasonal timing of temperatures led to asynchrony between prey and thermal regimes and resulted in declines in trout performance despite no changes to the total amount of prey or mean annual temperatures. Our findings suggest that management strategies emphasizing interactions among thermal regimes, prey, and environmental context can benefit tailwater fisheries in a rapidly changing world.