Big Fish On The Spring

[jdmidwest]

Took a little trip to the Spring River this weekend for our annual float. Fished dam 3 to Riverside. The river was running about a foot higher than normal and everything has been pushed around from the flood. Gravel bars have been stripped of willows and sycamores. New holes have been made and new channels cut. Fishing was good even though the water was off color. Due to the current and my friends impatience, most of the fishing was done on the run out of the boat. I used shad raps and spoons to catch the majority of the fish. My best fish was a 22" bow, my friend caught another close to the same size. We also pulled out a nice walleye below one of the falls. Fish run in size from fingerling cutthroats to the big trout and walleye. Pretty good crowd on the river, first nice weekend of the year.

Fished around the camp today with the fly rod and picked up several. Snail flies and wooly buggers were the fly of the day. Drove over the 11 pt at the Narrows on 142 and it is still running high. All local rivers around here washed out from a 3" rain Thursday.

The flood is rumored to have washed out rainbows in the hatchery and smallies and a few stripers at the Federal Hatchery in Mammoth. The fish my friend caught had a chewed up tail like a hatchery fish. My fish was bright and fins were excellent.

[Terry Beeson]

Nice pheesh!!!

What section did you do well with the fly?

Did you fish Bayou Access? What did it look like? I was in the area, but didn't get a chance to get over there. Now I wish I had...

[FishinCricket]

Beautiful trout! Glad you had a good time, I will have to chekc that river out too..

I can't even begin to tellyou how many new spots I have on my google maps after reading thorugh this forum...

[jdmidwest]

I flyfished the area below the Bayou access Sunday to Riverside Camp and picked up several. No big ones though. The areas above the first waterfall above Bayou to Dam 3 have really changed. The guys I floated with floated on Friday before I came down and were not taking time to fish on Sat. River was running about a foot high and was hard to hold the boat in the eddys and fish. Alot of the moss beds were gone. I buzzed thru Bayou to the cabins Sat and did not cover it well. We were going to float thru to Riversides 8 mile pullout but never made it past the camp. River was pretty crowded. Bayou was crowded.

The range of fish were fingerling cutts to the big bows. Most were 10 to 14 inch fish. The walleye was a surprise. It hit a cleo spoon. I don't know if they have just stocked fingerlings or they washed out of the hatchery. I did not catch any browns. They caught a fingerling brookie on Friday. That is a first in years. I don't fish it as much as I used to, in the 90's I used to be down there at least 4 days a month. When they started throwing Muskies in, the fingerlings disappeared pretty fast. I shelled out $70 in fuel alone this weekend for the trip down, can't do that much at that rate.

[Raleigh]

Glad that the spring is fishing ok , will be up this weekend maybe will catch some Big Trout, later Raleigh