Barren Fork Creek Fishing Guides and Conditions, Missouri

About the Barren Fork Creek

Barren Fork is a Shannon County creek that only exists as trout water because of one spring. Above Twin Springs the bed is usually dry. At the springs, roughly seven and a half million gallons a day of fifty-eight degree groundwater comes out of the ground and turns a dry channel into a cold, clear, watercress-lined creek that runs to Sinking Creek and on into the Current. The Blue Ribbon section is 3.2 miles, from County Road A-D down to Sinking Creek, and the fishable, publicly accessible part of that is much shorter.

How much shorter depends on who you ask. MDC holds a little over four hundred acres here, bought in 1995 and 2004, and published accounts of the public water range from about half a mile below Twin Springs to roughly a mile bounded by Sunklands Conservation Area. Everything below that is private and needs permission. Whichever figure is right, plan on a mile or less and plan to fish it slowly, because there is not enough water here to cover ground carelessly.

The rainbows are wild and have never been stocked. They have held on in Barren Fork for generations, limited less by fishing pressure than by how little habitat there is, and MDC has installed structures in the channel to narrow and deepen the wide shallow reaches and add overhead cover. Descriptions of the creek vary because the reaches vary: the spring branch itself is open and swift and close to forty feet across in places, while other stretches are tight, brush-lined and short on casting room. What does not vary is the fish. They are extraordinarily spooky in water this clear, and nymphs and terrestrials fished from a long way off do better than anything you swing. Sunklands is also the only place in Missouri known to hold monkshood, if you want a reason to look up from the water.

All six Blue Ribbon areas carry the same rules: flies and artificial lures only, no soft plastic, natural or scented baits for any species, an eighteen-inch minimum length, a daily limit of one trout, and no porous-soled waders. Gigging, bowfishing and atlatls are prohibited. Read the MDC page for this water before you fish it, because the boundaries are specific and posted, and a trout caught outside the marked section does not count toward the slam.

Access

Sunklands Conservation Area (MDC), 40,382 acres - the public ground on Barren Fork. From Eminence, north on Highway 19 then west 1 mile on County Road 19-324; look for the green sign on Highway A. From Salem, Highway 19 south then left on Highway A. Main area access is also 8 miles north of Summersville.
County Road A-D bridge - the upstream boundary of the Blue Ribbon section.
Twin Springs - where water actually appears in the channel and where the trout water begins.
Public water is roughly a mile or less below the springs; the rest of the regulated reach is private and requires landowner permission. Primitive dispersed camping is allowed on Sunklands.
Walk-wade only. No gauge on this creek. Area contact (573) 226-3616.

Seasons

Spring: good, with stable spring flow and fish spread out of the deepest holding water.
Summer: fishable all summer thanks to fifty-eight degree spring water, but the creek is tiny and gin clear and every fish sees you first.
Fall: the best of it. Low clear water, cool air, and very little company on a creek this size.
Winter: open, and the springs keep it ice-free. Wild rainbows spawn December into mid-March; stay off the pale gravel.