Hebron to Blair

[Jeff_L]

We floated Hebron to Blair the weekend of May 15 - 17, a group of 15 guys. Twin Bridges outfitted us, and we can't possibly say enough about Don, Judy and Nolan's service. They fed us great meals and helped with all logistics. Way better service than we have ever had from any other outfitter (7th year of doing a big trip like this). The upper float from Hebron to the first low water bridge was my favorite. Hardly any signs of life up there other than us and the wildlife. We camped just below Twin Bridges where two trees had fallen and completely closed off the river. We decided that was the river's way of telling us we should stop for the evening. We lucked out and only had a couple brief downpours and some steady rain in the middle of the night. River level was perfect.

While the springs are awesome and the flow is great further down, that part of the river is definitely much less enjoyable (to me) than the upper part due to so many more houses and people, and personally, I would rather fish for goggle eye and smallmouth than trout, especially from a canoe or kayak. It would be quite a challenge to find a sandbar on which to camp below CC also. Not many bars, and lots of property owners.

We had a lot of success on the upper part on a variety of techniques. I was fishing mostly tubes and got hauled around by the one in the photo. This was a couple miles above Twin Bridges. Others were consistently catching fish on rapalas and various jigs. I got the feeling that area is fished so infrequently that pretty much anything was going to get action.

We had been warned about landowners further up, but Twin Bridges claims they are putting people in at Topaz with no complaints. We certainly had no issues from Hebron down. I think, if we had to do it again, we would float Hebron to CC or Topaz back to Twin Bridges. The water from Hebron to Twin is not skinny at all, at least compared to plenty of other Ozark headwaters. We saw more wildlife on this trip than on any other, including upper Jacks, upper Buffalo, upper Kings, upper 11 Point. Just seemed like the perfect weekend for everything to be out. Including a vast array of snakes, one of which was hanging out in a tree and caused an amusing canoe flip for one of our group. A few strainers here and there, and enough rapids to keep everyone from getting too drunk. Perfect trip!

[Dan Kreher]

All smiles. I really like that upper North Fork as well.

[rFisherk]

A good portion of that float goes through, or at least along side, the Devil's Backbone Wilderness, which is where you probably saw the most wildlife. That is where I used to camp when floating back when I lived there. There's actually three tracts of Wilderness, amounting to 18,000 acres, where not even the government can drive in. Floating, hiking or horseback is the only way to access it. I saw a mountain lion in there back in the 1980s, but when I reported it, they treated me like an idiot.

[Amery]

^^^^i bet they wouldn't today. The big cats are here.