Fishing Sinking Creek at Echo Bluff State Park

​Echo Bluff is a state park located on the Sinking Creek near Eminence in southeastern Missouri. The park gets its name from a picturesque bluff on the creek overlooking the cabins.  Our family   organized a family reunion there for three nights over the past weekend. Sinking Creek is a shallow, fast moving, crystal clear stream that flows for about fourteen miles before emptying into the Current River. The creek offers fishing for Smallmouth Bass, Goggle-Eye, and Longear Sunfish. Last year we had a great day of fishing on the creek, so I was eager to get back to fishing it.

​As soon as I got unpacked, I grabbed my ultralight and walked down to the bluffs to do some fishing. I tied on a Rebel Crawdad crankbait and casted into one of the two sizable holes directly under the bluffs. The action was slower than I expected, and it took my about twenty minutes before I landed my first fish, a Goggle-Eye. After that fish I waded downstream to a deep turbulent pool that is tricky to fish but holds good numbers of fish. I landed three small Smallmouth Bass on consecutive casts.

As I was reeling in the third one, I noticed two large smallmouth following it in. This is a common characteristic of smallmouth bass, but it’s frustrating because it always seems like the smallest one of the group is the one that you have hooked. After this fish I went up to the cabin for the rest of the night.

The next day me and my dad could only fish for about an hour in the morning, so we decided to try out another bluff hole by the bridge. The hole was about fifty yards long, starting out deep and slow moving and gradually getting shallower and faster. Because it is located right by a road, it gets fished hard, but there was still several good sized smallmouth swimming around when we arrived just after sunrise. I stuck with the rebel craw, and my dad put on a white marabou jig. He caught about five smallmouths, including this nice one all on the jig.

It thunder stormed that afternoon and the next morning so we weren’t able to fish until around ten O’ clock the next day. The water was running faster and it was dirtier than usual. This gave us an opportunity to fish the more pressured holes without the fish being line shy. I put on a black rooster tail and casted into the current at one of the holes under the big bluff. I felt a hard bite and set the hook. As soon as I saw the fish I knew it was going to be the fish of the trip. I followed it down the stream to a calm spot where, after a lengthy fight, I was able to land it. After we took a few quick pictures we released it back into the stream.

After this fish the water quickly rose to the point that it was difficult to fish, and we only caught a few smaller ones that day.

​The last morning at Echo Bluffs we got up at sunrise to fish a few downstream holes we found the day before. We caught some small smallies at a few spots, but once we got to a long bluff hole, my dad found a boulder the smallmouth were grouping up behind. He proceeded to catch five or six nice fish, including this one.

While I was fooling around trying to catch crawdads, my dad hooked into a large smallmouth farther down into the hole. It fought hard, but my dad was able to bring it in and we got some nice pictures of it.

All in all, our trip to Echo Bluffs was very successful, with both me and my dad catching quality fish and having a good time doing it. I would recommend this place to anybody that enjoys spending time in a very natural setting and catching some nice fish at the same time. Of course, all fish were released to fight another day.

Billy McCaslin

https://www.nps.gov/ozar/index.htm

https://mostateparks.com/park/echo-bluff-state-park