Spring river Feb 27-29th, March 1st 2024
Attendees: Ryan Young, AL Harper, Steve Baker, DanStag and friend, Pastor John Kramer tried it out with some pretty decent success along with a great time with fellowship.
This very early season trip to the Spring River in Arkansas, was intended to bridge the gap to the opening of the parks. During mid-winter, it is said that the big brown trout will often make their way upstream toward the much warmer spring waters from the outflow of Mammoth Spring that form the headwaters of the river.
As always the weather plays a pretty key role. A few days before the trip it got unseasonably warm. On the day of our arrival, the temperature reached an astonishing 80 degrees.
Ryan Young boldly took the challenge and wet waded on Feb 27th, which should remain a FATC record for earliest date wet wading. The winds kicked up and had a big effect on the fishing; there were 30-35 mph gusts. [Wind is the enemy of the fly fisher !]
Both Ryan and Steve tried nymphing the riffles behind the cabin. This proved difficult, since the wind would often blow your indicator upstream or in Ryan’s case, prevented him from getting a solid euro nymph drift where he could sense the strikes. Heavier flies helped him a bit. Even so, they were able to pickup a few fish.
DanStag tried a couple of different approaches: 1) using heavy flies (a chartreuse mop fly with a BS Killer dropper) under a fairly large indicator. This helped a some, but many bites were missed since the take was not hard enough to noticeably jostle the indicator. A 12 inch smallmouth and 2-3 stocker sized trout were taken this method (uh, and a bluegill). 2) Later stripping a streamer under full sink line was a bit more successful. Wind was still a huge challenge since it was blowing upriver in one’s face. A few more fish were picked up on a Clouser minor (first time using it) and a brown leech.
AL and pastor John had put in at just below the dam at the visitors center and floated the 2 miles down to The Cold Creek access. They did well catching at least a dozen each mostly on brown or olive leeches and a variety of streamers.
Wednesday was an early breakfast and off to Mark Crawford’s fly shop. We like to chat with Mark, who is knowledgeable and fun to be around. Drove back to the cabin in time to catch the guys coming down the river and take pictures.
Ryan caught one at that spot, and their initial run was slow but later picked up. AL and Steve Baker took off on a downriver float in AL’S Flycraft. This meant that DanStag had the whole stretch to himself (just like in your dreams). Picked up a few more fish on streamers, including Olive wooly buggers.
Toward mid-afternoon, made a drive along the dusty back roads to Bayou access, which is stocked about once a month by Arkansas game and fish. Previous trips had yielded some nice fish in the area. Casting upstream and across with my Olive woolly letting it sink before stripping back yielded at a dozen strikes and hooked 4 or 5 but was unable to land any fish for some reason. Maybe the hook was dull (although it seemed sharp enough). Different fly made no difference. Headed back to the cabin to start happy hour once again and await news from Ryan and John.
They filled us with excited stories of their day with Mark. They had a great time fishing. Mark is quite entertaining and has lots of fishing knowledge to share. (Don’t think he can help it, if truth be known.) The guys reported they caught lots of fish, but nothing of great size. Mark knows the river and the spots, so pretty good chance you’ll do well and have a good time to boot !
The next day, Thursday, DanStag and AL put back in at the visitors center for the 2 mile float to Cold Creek. Between the visitors center and bridge over US 63 there are some good spots which yielded trout. AL seemed to do well with his streamers, especially in an area with big boulders, and where the bank dropped off into deeper water. Once we floated under the bridge, something truly remarkable happened. DanStag tossed out a yellow sparkled streamer, and hooked into a decent smallmouth (maybe 14” long) which put up a good fight. As we netted the fish, we noticed the caught fish had a fish tail sticking out of its mouth, in addition to having taken the fly. Pulling on the fish tail and out came a partially decomposed/digested 5” sculpin ! We got some pictures before releasing the smallmouth, and put the sculpin back in the smallie’s mouth. After all, who wants to have food taken from their mouth ? It seemed in-humane to do other wise.
As we made our way downstream, AL picking up a trout here and there, we came to some deep water that had some big boulders in them. I kept tossing in my yellow streamer and was rewarded with 3 more smallmouth in the next 20 minutes. Finally losing the prized yellow jig, AL kindly lent me a gold Murdich minnow that I had tied for him (AL is the smallmouth guy but I’m beginning to be a believer). I did catch one more smallmouth on that fly I’d tied. It was an exciting stretch with my good buddy, that I’ll never forget.
Further downstream we drifted over the Lassiter access, which is stocked periodically by Arkansas game and fish. This area seems to hold a lot of promise but has so much underwater vegetation, that is looks impossible to fish without constant hangups.
AL maneuvered us a hundred yards downstream to some fast, mildly choppy-looking water that might have been 4 feet deep (unwadable). Since we were in the boat, we were in a perfect spot. We connected on 4-6 trout each using streamers. The winning fly in that spot was Tom Hargrove’s special brown leech pattern with a fluorescent red bead head, possibly size 10 or 12. It worked pretty well there on the full sink line.
Another happy hour at the cabin back porch, and we went into town where we enjoyed a nice Fellowship meal at the Riverbend Restaurant.
It should be noted that although we caught trout there were few that reached any bragging size and only 1 brown trout for the entire 3 days. Most rainbows were in the 11 – 15 inch range, a bit of a letdown.
Friday March 1st, Opening Day at Montauk: UP early the next morning, cleaned up, packed and started back for home. Steve Baker and DanStag decided to make the detour to Montauk to check out the Opening Day extravaganza. The idea was that we’d arrive after lunch and most of the meat hunters would “have their limit” and clear out leaving a few spots for us. Didn’t exactly work out that way.
As a spectacle Opening Day didn’t disappoint. It had been posted earlier that someone had caught a 7 1/4 lb trout behind the lodge, easily the biggest fish of the day.
We arrived around 12:30 and the park was still packed. The area above the dam had people still lined up everywhere, including along the far shore for maybe 100 yards, even though we didn’t see many fish being taken. At the Oak hole, below the dam where bridge crosses and the low water bridge is located, there were probably a couple dozen fishermen. Steve’s plan to go downstream from the bridge was squelched by the 3-4 guys already fishing there.
Steve made an interesting observation as we drove around: there were almost NO fishermen with Fly Rods ! This was never more apparent than when we drove to the hole behind the raceways and the lodge. First thing one noticed was that there were at least 25 cars parked in the lot and along the road that normally holds 10-12 cars with ease. That day people were parking along the driveway and one impatient soul decided to park IN the driveway. At the stream, there were wall to wall fishermen. I counted 28 spinning rod fishermen and one lone brave soul in the middle of them, stubbornly drifting a nymph under an indicator using a fly rod. People were on both sides of the stream all up and down that stretch fishing over each other. As we were leaving we saw another 5 spin rod fisherman walking down to squeeze their way in. It was a fly fishers nightmare, actually, going against everything we all love about the sport (peace, tranquility, solitude).
Opening day this year (2024) seemed even more crowded than last year. Being on a Friday with the prospect of a weekend of harvesting fish ahead, people came from near and far to take their fair share. Trying not to be snobby or uppity about it, I have to remind myself that it’s their park too. We just have to share it. We pick our spots for our own enjoyment and move on.
Headed back home to more civilized environs, being anxious for fishing season to return to normal (if it ever will).
Dan Stag 06 Mar 2024
