SILOAM SPRINGS, ARK. — A group of anglers gathered on a gravel bar at the edge of a gin clear stream under a blue sky and foliage gilded by the touch of coming fall. They listened intently over the rushing of the stream to the teachings of Lefty Kreh, the 85-year-old icon who some call the godfather of American fly fishing. Below the limestone bluffs, native-born rainbow and brown trout, deep bellied and heavy shouldered, rested nearby; dark torpedo shapes like ghostly flaws under the water’s mirror-like surface.

The scene was the result of the unlikely dream of a Tulsa teenager who daydreamed of trout while at Metro Christian High School and as a caddy at Southern Hills Country Club. He has grown into a young outdoors industry entrepreneur whose dream is materializing just over an hour’s drive from his hometown.

Adam Maris — baseball fans with recognize the last name he shares with a famous cousin — had options when he left college. He studied business and chemistry and shadowed a neurologist for two years. He played college ball with major league dreams that were not to be — but he did land an offer to work in the front office for the Boston Red Sox. Still, he chose to chase that high school dream.

“It’s an idea I came up with while caddying. Something like a country club, only for fly fishing,” he said.

Others had expectations about medical school or the BoSox.

“When I told my folks that I wanted to take my life savings and start a fly fishing club, my folks, my parent and my grandparents, they thought I was crazy,” Maris said.

“We thought he had gone plumb loco,” said his grandfather, Ed Smith.

But five years later, his Spring Valley Anglers is the largest such club in the country, with 63 properties, 152 miles of private waters for fishing and 58,000 acres of private land for hunting in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Florida. Members of the limited club, who pay dues of $334 a month, have access to it all.

The Arkansas stream, now home to the recently purchased headquarters and eight miles of private stream access, is where it all began. Maris hosted a members’ appreciation day there last Sunday. It included the instruction from Kreh, renowned fisher-photographers Barry and Cathy Beck and top Canadian guide and well-known outdoor TV “Flygal” April Vokey (who happens to be Maris’ girlfriend). After the day’s events, as people crowded into and around the kitchen to prepare barbecued steaks and other fixings for dinner, the gathering looked and felt more like a family reunion than a business appreciation meeting.

As big and established as the club may seem, Maris’ 20-something face and the newly purchased headquarters with new construction evident inside and out belie its relative youth. Maris credits a growth spurt over the past two years to the club’s vice president Phil Napolitan, who played college baseball with Maris at Oklahoma City University. Napolitan joined the new business after he left the Detroit Tigers.

“He is truly the straw that stirs the drink,” Maris said.

But it was Maris who kick-started the dream. He found the stream through many hours of scouting and driving around while he was in high school, he said. He wrote the landowner a letter every month for three years just to get permission to fish the spring-fed stream, which is home to naturally reproducing trout.

His first access point was a leased section with an old farmhouse several miles downstream. Grandfather Smith described it as “leaky-roofed and fly- and rat-infested.”

“I have to admit there were some nights when I laid in that farmhouse and thought, ‘I could be in Boston,’” Maris said.

“It’s taken about nine years, since I was a senior in high school, getting permission and then with leases and finally this year we made this purchase,” he said of Spring Valley Anglers’ new home.

And what a home it is.

Kreh, who has fished the world as an outdoor writer since 1952, praised Maris and appreciated the stream as a “natural, wild type fishery.”

“There are not many streams in the Midwest, or the United States today, that are as clear and pristine as this one,” he said. “The other thing that has impressed me is that Adam is one of the most dedicated young men I’ve ever met; hardworking. I wish there were more young men like him. If there were I don’t think our country would be in the kind of mess it’s going to be in.

Read Kelly Bostian’s blog at tulsaworld.com/outdoors.

The private fly-fishing and hunting club is hosting corporate events designed to allow companies to connect on a more personal level outside their corporate environments.

“Our commitment is to provide our clients with the perfect venue to strengthen relationships with staff members and existing clients,” said Adam Maris, a Tulsa native and president of Spring Valley Anglers. “Our clients have the opportunity to build relationships in a setting free from the distractions of the office environment, which is vital to continued success of their businesses.”

Spring Valley Anglers members have access to more than 60 different fly-fishing properties and more than 150 miles of private water, as well as 58,000 hunting acres. The properties are in Colorado, Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The club leads guided fishing and hunting trips for corporate guests and provides equipment.

Meals are prepared by a chef at the headquarters, which overlooks the private spring creek and includes a deck and an outdoor fireplace. A theater projection screen with surround sound is also available for business presentations, movies and sporting events.

“SVA has been an incredible venue for us to host clients and staff members,” said Anthony Reiss, owner of Reiss Painting in Tulsa. “We have used SVA’s amenities for corporate incentive trips, corporate training meetings and as a way to further relationships with existing clients. I couldn’t imagine a better setting to build and foster relationships with clients.”

Guests stay in six luxury log cabins, which are individually themed and furnished. Each cabin can accommodate four to eight people.

Spring Valley Anglers is 15 miles north of Siloam Springs, Ark.

Armstrong, DePuy’s and Nelson – hallowed names to the trout enthusiast that describe the nirvana of technical spring creek fly angling. Gin clear, cold and relatively slow-moving water, rich in insect biomass, where magazine quality trout occupy feeding lanes and casually sip tiny mayflies from the surface or wait for a subsurface nymph in the current – rarely moving an inch or two to ingest the morsel. Water where hair-thin 6X, 7X and even 8X tippets are the norm and flies so tiny that a size 18 is considered large rule the day.

Water like this is found only in the Blue Ribbon Water trout states of Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, not a five hour drive from the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex – until now. Enter Spring Valley Anglers. The dream of Major League Baseball hopeful, Adam Maris is now a reality in the spring fed northern Arkansas Ozarks.

Missing the solitude that brought many of us into fly fishing, conservation and quality angling dedicated, Maris created a membership based fly fishing club that provides private water exclusivity and the opportunity to cast to, and catch, trout of a lifetime for south central US anglers all without air travel or multi-day road trips to the mountain states.

Spring Valley Anglers (SVA), based in Tulsa, Oklahoma has secured exclusive 20 year leases on several fish-rich spring creeks, lakes and new next fall, farm land, for mixed bag upland bird hunts which will offer members and guests the opportunity for a “cast & blast” adventure.

Dallas Business Journal Publisher, Huntley Paton, a new SVA member, has enjoyed several trips to SVA’s leases in Northwest Arkansas and Northeast Oklahoma which sport “beats” or stretches of trophy trout infested spring creek water. The beats, improved by SVA to provide quality habitat and an oxygen rich environment for rainbow and brown trout, feature pools and riffles filled with trophy, albeit proper spring creek wary fish. “Feeding my trout obsession, while balancing business and family commitments is challenging, but these private waters offer superb year-round fly fishing for big fish only five hours from my home” Paton offered. “My most recent trip in early February with two friends resulted in nearly 30 rainbows caught and released and more than twice that many hooked and lost on light (6-7X) tippet. Few rainbows were less than 16 inches and most between 16 an 22 inches. Of course, we broke off the monsters” Paton added.

The fly fishing is technical – at least during the winter months where the trout are feeding on subsurface midge larvae and scuds in crystal clear, low water. If you can see them – they can see you. Long leaders tapered to 6x – 7x tippet, and size 18-24 flies cast lightly from low profile, stalk-like kneeling positions induce strikes. Poor drifts, sloppy casts, large nymphs and heavier tippet result in almost laughing refusals from the well educated trout. This is technical big trout fly angling at its best in a region where you would assume the closest you would get to split cane would be a bamboo pole and stout line drowning a worm under a bobber on a hot summer’s day.

SVA offers year-round private fly fishing for trophy trout, small mouth bass and soon, peacock bass on their private ponds in northwest Arkansas and adjacent Oklahoma. A limited number of annual memberships are available and provide members exclusive access to leased water, a club house, opportunity to rent on water lodging, reduced rates on guided angling and flies crafted specifically for their water and conditions. Allowing only catch and release fly fishing, a maximum of 4 rods per beat per day, and periodically resting each beat from fishing ensures low fishing pressure and a quality angling experience.

For more information or to join Spring Valley Anglers visit their website at www.springvalleyanglers.com or call 479-291-0111.

The indicator twitched slightly to the right. My line snapped tight as I lifted the rod, and my line ripped through the water toward the far bank, froze, then rocketed upward with one of those twenty-five inch rainbows attached that I had seen earlier. I horsed the fish back to my shore as quickly and carefully as I could, given a size 22 dropper mayfly nymph dangling from a 6X cobweb tippet. Bubba had the big rubber striper net ready.

Five feet from shore now. I will land this beast. Think again. From nowhere a twelve-inch rainbow darted forth and snagged the top micro nymph, in the process shouldering my big fish off the bottom fly like a hockey defenseman bumping a forward off the puck.

That twelve-incher looked very small in that huge net. You had to laugh.

This epiphany happened Saturday morning, 10 March 2007, on a spring creek in northwest Arkansas compliments of The Angling Report’s “Free fishing” program. Don Causey selected me to be the guest of Spring Valley Anglers, a private fishing club, for a weekend visit. Originally scheduled for early February, the trip was postponed twice, first by a massive ice storm that seems to have topped every tree in the region, second by the several weeks’ cleanup effort caused by that same storm. But this trip was definitely worth waiting for. SVA owner Adam Maris, an Orvis-endorsed guide, provided me with a memorable weekend. For an online overview of the SVA operation, visit www.springvalleyanglers.com where you will learn that SVA offers individual and corporate club memberships. In order to maintain a quality fishery and a quality experience for anglers, the club will cap its memberships at 150, a figure SVA is very close to reaching. What one gets for his or her membership is unlimited access to the trophy waters, exclusive access to SVA’s thousands of duck, quail, turkey, and trophy whitetail hunting acreage, reduced guide fees, discounted lodging, and access to the “members only” section of the SVA website. Further, SVA offers travel opportunities to domestic and foreign dream venues—the San Juan River, the Green River, the Bahamas, New Zealand, and Patagonia Argentina—with seriously reduced lodging and guide rates since the outfitters are part of the SVA network.

At the moment, Spring Valley Anglers has leased fifteen miles of spring and freestone water on six creeks and rivers, twelve miles in northwest Arkansas and three miles in northeast Oklahoma, These waters are divided into nine beats, frequently rested so the fishing remains fresh. Years ago, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission stocked rainbows and browns on these streams, so now one is fishing for naturally reproducing wild trout in the Arkansas holdings. These spring creeks are incredibly fertile, leading to fast growth rates. Many twenty-five to thirty inch fish cruise these waters, gorging on mayflies, caddis, stoneflies, sow bugs, aquatic worms, leeches, baitfish, snails, periwinkles, and crawfish. Moreover, two of SVA’s streams are being managed as smallmouth bass fisheries, providing an extra game fish attraction for anglers. In addition, SVA has six trout ponds for the still water/float tube aficionado. All fishing on Spring Valley Anglers land is catch and release with barbless hooks. And you will need a fishing license for one, or both, states, depending on locations you fish.

Memberships include fishing privileges for one’s entire household. Members can bring guests for a $50.00 fee per guest per visit. Guide fees for members are $300.00 per day; a guided trip for two anglers includes all gear, flies and lunch.

Lodging is available on the sprawling Spring Valley Anglers lands. My wife and I stayed in a three-bedroom/two bath fully equipped (including a fireplace and firewood supply) luxury log home. SVA offers five additional luxury log homes for rent; the accommodations offered by SVA are second to none. Finally, SVA has a number of tent camping sites available on a spring creek for those who like to rough it.

The master spirit of Spring Valley Anglers is owner Adam Maris, an engaging and personable twenty-something, a former college baseball player, who had these career options a few years ago: join the front office of the Boston Red Sox, go to medical school at the University of Oklahoma, or start up the SVA initiative. Try not to hate him. Since his second cousin was Yankee legend, Roger Maris, he simply couldn’t bring himself to work for the Red Sox, and he passed on the safer option of medical school. Anglers can be grateful for his career choice. Adam is a dedicated and environmentally conscious fly fisher and very temperamentally suited for hosting guests in his fiefdom. He guided me on beat one most of Friday, showed me the tiny nymphs that imitate the naturals, and put me into fish all day. I landed seven rainbows of 17-20 inches. It was New Zealand style sight casting. These fish spit artificials in a nanosecond, and the takes are hyper-subtle, so one sets the hook on the slightest twitch or hesitation of one’s line or indicator. Adam recommends fishing without an indicator, which may tell you how spooky these trout are.

We used size 20 and 22 mayfly nymphs called WD-50 and the Micro May. Early in the morning, from first light to an hour later, the fish will chase small woolly buggers. After that, it’s all nymphing with 6X or 7X tippet. However, spring hatches are just around the corner, including the March Brown, a big southeastern mayfly that brings every trout in Arkansas and Oklahoma out to play.

On Saturday morning, Bubba Smith, Head Guide and Manager of SVA, guided me on beat three. Like Adam, Bubba lives on the SVA property. On bright, sunny days, Bubba and Adam make their sports cast from their knees, and both carry knee pads as part of their gear. My knees are thankful that I picked a relatively low light weekend. An affable native Montanan, Bubba has guided all over the west, the last nine years on New Mexico’s San Juan River. As a veteran guide, he has seen it all, and was very patient with my occasional stubbed cast and/or break off. However, one doesn’t have to be Steve Rajeff on this spring creek. If one can cast twenty-five to thirty feet with some accuracy, that’s all one needs. I hooked up nine that morning, landing six, exclusive of the David batting away Goliath scenario mentioned earlier. Bubba oversees stream enhancements and management for Spring Valley Anglers. SVA continues to steadily improve stream habitat with weirs, logs, and vegetation planting.

The environmental diligence reflected by the hard work of SVA has attracted the attention of both state and federal agencies. Arkansas state hydrologists estimate that water quality has improved 40% on SVA waters. Federal EPA officials are using SVA as exhibit A of what dedicated people can achieve in cost-effective habitat improvement.

Spring Valley Anglers is very green, another virtue for we who care about coldwater fisheries. SVA has formed a non-profit conservancy. Keep an eye on the websites for progress reports.

Anglers who hunt as well as fish will want to know that Spring Valley Anglers currently has thousands of acres of quail habitat as well as numerous duck ponds. SVA is currently negotiating for a 12,000-acre Oklahoma ranch that will be managed for deer and quail hunting. So bring your weapons as well as fly rods since SVA has a shooting range and clay pigeon facility on the premises. Pull!

Headquarters for Spring Valley Anglers is a one hour twenty minute drive east from Tulsa, five hours and fifteen minutes from Dallas, six hours and thirty minutes from Fort Worth, and three hours and thirty northwest from Little Rock. Add two more hours from Memphis. Adam Maris can be reached by telephone at 479.291.0111.

Adam’s email address is adam@springvalleyanglers.com.

For a relaxing and peaceful time, with a chance to catch large, challenging trout, Spring Valley Anglers can’t be beat. My wife didn’t want to leave. She accompanied me in her official capacity as family photographer. She got some nice pictures that you can
view on the Spring Valley Anglers or The Angling Report websites.

I’m grateful to Don Causey and The Angling Report for this break from reality.