Your springer will do just fine on ducks, here on the west side you shouldn't even need a vest. Late season on the eastside I'd get a vest. Springers love to retrieve and can do some pretty fancy retrieving, in Englend they use them for nonslip retrievers on driven shoots. With a little work 100+yrd blinds should be a piece of cake for a springer.
My next dog is going to be an English Cocker and it will be doing alot of duck work.
AWS