OPINION

REX NELSON: Along Spavinaw Creek

A creek runs through it. It's Spavinaw Creek, to be exact, a spring-fed stream that begins in a far corner of Northwest Arkansas and flows west into Oklahoma. It's here that Adam Maris, a former college baseball player, has created his field of fly fishing dreams.

I take pride in having visited hundreds of places in Arkansas. But I've never been on the Spavinaw until this trip to Maris' Spring Valley Anglers Rod & Gun Club near Decatur. I'm sitting on the expansive wooden deck behind the Spring Valley clubhouse on an early spring afternoon. Below me, the creek runs swift and clear. I can smell the beef tenderloin being cooked on the deck for dinner. I'm reading a book of fly fishing stories from the club's library. It's windy, cool and sunny, and I'm as relaxed as I've been in months. Among those fishing here is Brandon Weeden, the NFL quarterback out of Oklahoma State University who recently moved from the Tennessee Titans to the Houston Texans.

"I've been fly fishing for trout in New Zealand nine times, and this creek is as close as you're going to get in the United States to what I've experienced there," says Maris, a Tulsa native and a second cousin of baseball legend Roger Maris.

In a recent column in this newspaper, historian Tom Dillard wrote about how Arkansas once was known as the Land of Opportunity. The phrase first appeared on the state's automobile license plates in 1941. It was the product of a group of Little Rock businessmen known as the Committee of 100. They were trying to change the state's image and spur economic development. In 1953, the Arkansas Legislature changed the state's nickname from the Wonder State to the Land of Opportunity. It remained the official nickname until 1995 when the Natural State was adopted. Maris has found Arkansas to be his Land of Opportunity.

Maris grew up fascinated with baseball and fly fishing. As a 12-year-old, Maris talked his father into taking him fly fishing following a baseball tournament in Denver. As a teenager, he was a caddie at Southern Hills, the exclusive Tulsa country club founded in 1936 on land donated by oilman Waite Phillips. Southern Hills hosted the U.S. Open in 1958, 1977 and 2001. It hosted the PGA Championship in 1970, 1982, 1994 and 2007. I covered my first major there as a young Arkansas Democrat writer in 1982. Maris decided he would one day create a club for fly fishermen just as exclusive as Southern Hills was for golfers.

Dallas Morning News outdoors editor Ray Sasser wrote in 2010: "Though it took him two years to catch his first trout on a fly, Adam Maris could not ignore the siren call of running water and whining fly reels. Fly ball, fly line--what's the difference? To him, fly fishing had all the symmetry of baseball in a prettier setting and without the crowds."

"I want to do here for outdoorsmen what Warren Stephens has done at Alotian in Little Rock and what John Tyson has done at the Blessings at Fayetteville for golfers," Maris says. "I want a facility that's as good as anything in the country. I heard about this creek when I was in high school and started driving over here on a regular basis. The land was privately owned, and I asked one of the owners for permission to fish. He wouldn't let me, but I was persistent. I would write him a letter every month. He finally relented in 2003 when I was a junior in college."

Maris played baseball at Oklahoma City University after graduating from Metro Christian Academy in Tulsa. He took pre-med courses in college and once thought he would enter medical school after graduation. Due to the family's baseball connections, he also had an offer to work for the Boston Red Sox. But he couldn't get Spavinaw Creek off his mind. There had once been a business known as the Spavinaw Trout Lodge in a 1915 farmhouse along the creek, and Maris was determined to create something even finer. He bought a ramshackle house and went to work. Spring Valley Anglers was created in 2006.

"A tree fell through the roof of that old house, and I didn't have enough money to fix it for three months," Maris says. "I just thought of it as my new skylight. I was leasing property along the creek for $15,000 a year. I didn't make any money until 2010, but I hung in there."

Maris worked with his grandfather, who's now 90 and lives in Tulsa, to build the clubhouse and cabins. The club can sleep 22 people, and that number will soon increase to 40. Maris regularly hosts corporate retreats. The club has 150 members, both corporate and individual. Maris, whose wedding was at the club in 2013, owns 1,200 acres in the area and offers deer and turkey hunting in addition to trout fishing. Visitors can also hunt pen-raised quail and pheasant that have been released in adjacent fields.

When it comes to trout fishing in Arkansas, most people think of the tailwaters below U.S. Army Corps of Engineers impoundments. This is more like something you would find in Colorado as fishermen wade the stream. Trout aren't native to Arkansas, but they've reproduced in Spavinaw Creek. Spring Valley had a stocking permit from the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission several years ago. Maris is working to obtain a new permit.

"There were commercial hatcheries here at one time," Maris says. "The creek has had trout in it for more than a century. On a scale of one to 10, this place is a seven or eight right now when it comes to trout fishing. The club record is a 35-inch rainbow. If we can get a new permit, it will be a 10."

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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial on 04/04/2018

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