Having just spent a day floating the White River, I think both Brent Hinds and I were relieved when we had made the decision on the trip down to fish the Spring River on the way back. I used to fish the Spring River quite a bit several years ago, but had for some reason or the other, not made frequent trips there in several years. I don’t know why.
The river is an absolute gem. We rolled in to the Lassiter Access about 8am and were the only ones there. After quickly wadering up, we hit the water. I headed to a faster riffle section above the access and after making a handful of fly and indicator changes, I seemed to have hit the mark with a #16 trout crack under a yarn indicator about 3ft. The presentation was straight upstream and fishing the seams back down to me. I picked up 4 quick fish in about 10 casts out of the same run and decided that I needed to do a little less fishing and some more exploring to realize what I was missing on this river.
Brent Hinds was fishing the far bank and it seemed that every time I looked down river at him, he was hooked up with a fish. He was fishing a fox squirrel nymph under an indicator and doing well. This was his first trip to the Spring River and I think he was very pleasantly surprised.
After about an hour of fishing at the Lassetter Access, we headed up to the tourist center and did some exploring in the faster water at the base of the dam. I didn’t get any hookups in this water, but there were some bait fisherman that were fishing the choice areas and I didn’t want to be that guy that disturbed their fishing, so we left soon after checking out a few areas.
The Spring River is about 3.5hrs from St. Louis and is worth the trip, if you are looking for a river where the trout are plentiful (you can even catch a cutthroat there as the AGFC stocks them annually) and the scenery is a big freestone stream with no generation worries. I know I will be back, hopefully sooner rather than later.