Eleven Point River

The Eleven Point is what happens when one enormous spring turns an ordinary Ozark float stream into cold-water trout country. Above Greer it's a modest warmwater river; then Greer Spring Branch dumps in — Greer is one of the largest springs in the Ozarks — and roughly doubles the river's flow while dropping the water into the mid-50s. From that confluence down you have a spring-fed trout fishery running through the Mark Twain National Forest toward Bardley and the Arkansas line. This is a federally designated National Scenic River: canoe-and-johnboat country, where the standard advice is that you float to reach the good runs rather than wade to them.

The headline water is the roughly 5.5-mile Blue Ribbon reach from the mouth of Greer Spring Branch down to Turner Mill — flies and artificial lures only, one trout over 18 inches. It holds stream-bred wild rainbows (an MDC sample put it near 83 wild trout per mile, with total trout north of 300 per mile after supplemental spring and fall stockings) plus the occasional trophy over 18 inches. Most fish run 9 to 16 inches; the pretty, hard-fighting Ozark rainbows average around 12 to 15. Technique skews toward heavy nymphs and streamers fished deep under an indicator in the cold spring flow, with dries when the mayflies and caddis come off. Standard Ozark-spring-creek forage — scuds, sowbugs, midges — matters year-round.

Below Turner Mill the river shifts to the White Ribbon reach down to Highway 160 near Riverton: heavily stocked put-and-take, bait legal, a four-trout limit with a 15-inch minimum on browns. That's where the USGS gauge sits near Bardley, and it's the flow reference for the whole cold-water river. Because it's spring-fed it stays fishable and cold through an Ozark summer — the trade-off is canoe-and-gravel-bar traffic on warm-weather weekends. Fall is the most consistent season: flows stabilize, the fish stay strong, and you dodge the spring flooding that's become more frequent.