Colburn's Sabine Connection

Fishing too easy for May!

I left the house this morning with every intention of doing something constructive.  Pay bills, change oil, find my chain saw, pick up some more outboard motor oil and a bottle of ring free.  One phone call and less than an hour later we were on the water.  Even at that, I was trying to do something constructive as we were just going to check some backwater for redfish for a friend.

We did manage to eventually do that, but only after a couple of hours of incredibly easy fishing.  In my buddy, Chuck Uzzle's words, "It is stupid good right now on Sabine!

I clean a lot of fish, but very few of them make it to my house.  We decided to keep a limit of trout this morning and it took no longer than fifteen minutes.  We saw a couple of small flocks of gulls, but all you had to do was slow down and look for shrimp running for their lives.  Of the first fifteen or so trout we caught, only two were undersized.  We later released several 20-23 inch fish having already boxed the quick limit.

Our largest trout may have weighed four pounds.  We caught every fish on a bone diamond or red shad Assassin rigged on a quarter ounce head.  We also caught and released three or four slot redfish that we found under a small group of terns.  There were a few redfish back in the marsh, but they were difficult to see as we fooled around with those trout until the wind picked up.

We stayed south of Green's and the water was in very good shape.  It's going to blow tomorrow, but things are supposed to line back out by Sunday.  We should have a great week to fish next week.  I'll be at the Northeast Houston CCA Banquet at the Humble Civic Center tomorrow night.  If you're in the area come by and visit and eat some crawfish.

We've still got a few openings in May so give us a call and get in on some very easy fishing.  If that statement doesn't bring it all to a screeching halt, nothing will! 

Wind hasn't killed the program

Here it is Tuesday and I am still getting calls and e-mails from folks that just slayed trout in the lake Sunday.  Saturday was equally good, but it took a day for the word to get out!

The wind has choked things down the past two days, but the water will clear overnight once this latest front blows though and it will be on again.  Perhaps the best part of that incredible weekend was that you did better if you weren't under birds attracting other boats.  There were enough shrimp getting chased to the top all over the lake to have your own fish to yourself both days.

There is little doubt that soft plastics like the Assassins,Tidal Surge Split Tails, and any number of other soft plastics were the bait of choice.  We did extremely well on pumpkin-chartreuse, but juding by my mail, more fish were caught on glow-chartreuse.

Buddy and Jeanette Rhome kept sixteen trout this morning drifting live finger mullet under a popping cork in all of that wind.  Jeanette, the real fisherperson of the two, said they never saw the first bird work, but repeated several drifts over one flat in 4-6 feet of water until nine o'clock before heading back to Houston.  They caught fish Satuday on LSU Cocahoes under a Mauler, but couldn't get the fish to hit plastic this morning.

  Ernie Eickenhorst said they had their trout very early this weekend and that they did much better  burning a Split Tail just beneath the surface.  Not many other folks were fishing that technique and he felt like it helped them limit quickly. He added that he talked with two other anglers that caught several trout over the 20 inch mark on their way to easy limits with a pumpkin Crazy Croaker.  We did well with a glow-chartreuse Crazy Croaker two weeks ago when the fish were chasing shrimp, but the gafftop destroyed the small hooks.

We could have at least a two day repeat of last week once this little front blows through.  Even if the wind doesn't let up, I think the fishing is solid enough to drift the same areas and still catch fish.  Look for the redfish to start doing their thing as well in the next week or so.  They have been schooling sporadically from mid-lake south, but they will show up in numbers on the north end once the shad mature and start rafting up.

Better than yesterday?

I very rarely fish Sundays as they are reserved for church and family so I wasn't on the water today.  I did, however, get an "on the water report" from Capt. Mike Rector while on the way to church and talked with Dale Billings later in the afternoon.  Neither of them did particularly well yesterday, but had very good outings today.

After comparing notes last night, Mike fished the same areas we fished yesterday and limited on trout up to 19 inches.  He said they caught their share of gafftop as well, but not as many as yesterday.  The best color forthem today was bone diamond.  Those fish were still chasing shrimp rather than shad.

Dale didn't limit on trout, but did find two small schools of redfish right in the middle of the lake just before noon.  He and his partners kept nine slot fish and released several others before the schooling stopped.  They caught their first four keepers on chartreuse Top Dog, Jrs. and the rest of their fish on Hoginars.  Dale said the entire time that action was going on they never saw the first gull.

He did say that they found two huge schools of small trout and bluefish under the gulls on the south end of the lake.  Both fishermen said the water was in great shape every where they fished.  I think the shad are going to have to get a little larger before we start running into the big schools of reds, but you never know.  This has already been a very different year.

Trout under the bireds again

A light northeast wind flattened out Sabine Lake and we enjoyed one of those days.  The water cleared up well over night and the birds were chasing shrimp again.  We never caught a trout that would weigh four pounds, but they were easy to come by and all of the fish were good solid keepers.

We even caught a few trout in the bayous as well as reds and some keeper flounder.  I would have been more than happy with that bite, so the bird action was icing on the cake.  We caught trout all the way from the first fishing pier on the north revetment wall to Bridge Bayou.  If there was any negative at all, it was the gafftop bite.  Several of the flocks of birds we worked later in the day were feeding over nothing, but gafftop.

Any time we caught the first gafftop we moved to another set of birds.  We caught a lot of trout on the smaller Sea Shad, but the majority of our larger fish hit the longer Assassin.  We caught them on limetreuse, pumpkin-chartreuse, bone diamond and glow-chartreuse.  A lighter jig head worked much better as the fish were just below the surface most of the day.

It will probably blow like hell tomorrow, but it was fun today!

Decent day in spite of monsoon

Sabine Lake offered little more than doom and gloom yesterday according to the folks I talked with.  Even when they got a break in the wind it was still tough finding a fish.  The folks I talked with were guides without parties doing their homework!

Today started out much differently.  We left the dock knowing we were on the clock with a super bad frontal system bearing down on us.  We had no idea it was turbo-charged.  We had already put the second trout in the boat when the first rumble of thunder announced the storm's arrival.  We immediately ran back in, but even immediately wasn't fast enough.  It was quite a show for the better part of an hour.

The gale force winds that ushered the storm in subsided some, but never laid down enough to lure us into the lake.  We spent the bulk of the day in the river and the bayous and the bite wasn't bad at all.  We missed a lot of fish, but still finished the day with a mixed bag of trout, redfish and flounder.  The tide went slack for a very short period of time around noon and once it started back in, the bite was on.

We fished several colors of Sea Shads rigged on 1/4 ounce heads, but caught most of our fish on glow chartreuse.  We also caught them on black-chartreuse, and pumpkin chartreuse.  We missed one redfish that may well have been too long, but the ones we kept were in the 22-23 class.  We also missed a bunch of flounder, but the ones we boxed were very solid fish.  The flounder and the redfish were beating up on the huge schools of tiny shad that are all over the bayous right now.

We did make one short pass all the way to the north revetment wall just to look at the water and it didn't look bad at all considering the pounding it has been taking from a week's worth of wind.  The mullet were all over the flats behind the islands, but we never got bit on the one short drift we made throwing topwaters.  Johnny Cormier ran the lake early and eventually wound up fishing the jetties.  He called late in the afternoon and said they really struggled.

I don't know what to expect for the remainder of the weekend, but if the wind will give us a break, I will probably head south again in the morning.  Prior to all of this wind, we had an excellent bite down there, so it should be the first bite to improve. I talked witn one other group of fishermen that drifted the reef for three hours and caught one redfish on a red shad soft plastic in 12 feet of water.   

Hope you and your family have a wonderful Easter weekend!

I apologize for waiting this late to post a report, but I must admit it was done in a selfish vain.  I felt like I had a very small group of fish cornered up that I could count on if all else failed and all else failed today.  It did, however, payoff yesterday.  I don't fish much on the weekend and I didn't know what to expect as far as traffic

I fished with Joe and Jennifer Racy of Spurger on Thursday and we just had a great trip.  They are very eager to learn more about the lake and are a lot of fun to fish with. We caught redfish and trout under the birds early on the south end of the lake in perfect near windless conditions.  The water was still off-colored on the south end, but it didn't seem to bother the fish.  They were chasing both shrimp and ribbon fish and we caught them on Sea Shads under a Mauler and Tidal Surge Split Tails rigged on a one eighth ounce head. 

When the wind picked up, we came back north and caught a couple of trout on a Crazy Croaker and a six pound plus trout on a She Dog.  Those fish were in three feet of water feeding on mullet over shallow shell.  That's the fish Jennifer is holding in our photo section.  When the wind finally got too strong, we moved into the river and caught one big flounder and a kazillion trout in fifteen feet of water.  There were some small fish, but there were a lot of 16 to 19 inch fish as well.

The wind killed the bite in the lake Friday, but we hid out in the marsh and eventually returned to the same spot in the river to salvage the day.  An old friend, Dr. Wade French of Tyler, talked me into switching over to Power Pro braided line on one of my casting reels and there is no doubt that it made a huge difference, especially fishing in the wind.  Even at fifteen feet, the strikes that felt very light on mono were jolts on the braided stuff.  I am changing out two more reels tonight.

I think God punished me for hoarding informaiton.  Today was imposssible in the gale force winds.  We couldn't even get out in the lake and the mouths of the Passes were really sanded up.  We did catch a few more trout in the river and three or four in the marsh, but it was basically a wash.  I did, however, catch my first red of the spring on a tube jig in Cow Bayou and missed a couple more.  That bite has been non-existent for me until today.

I would like to thank Bob Smith for a recent e-mail with an update on the water conditions on the reef.  He is helping a friend re-build a pier and he has been watching the water conditions slowly improve while doing so.  That kind of information saves a lot of miles and gas money.  We did catch a few trout down there both Thursday and Friday, but it hasn't really turned on for me or I am missing the show.

I talked with Kim Smith at CastAway Rods and she thanked all of you for your prayers.  Her son has healed up much faster than anticipated following his accident and is on the road to a full recovery.  That will make for a very special Easter for Kim and her family.

Hope all of you have a blessed and Happy Easter and we'll get back after the fish next week!

 

Light wind...lots of fish

For the first time in quite a while we quit the fish before they quit us and we apparently weren't the only ones.  We caught trout on everything from She Dogs to Tails fished under a Mauler.  We caught them in the marsh, on the flats, under the birds in the open lake, and fifteen feet deep in the ICC.

The redfish worked hard in the early morning on the extreme south end of the lake, but most of them were oversized.  The water on the south end doesn't look as good as it does in the mid-lake area, but it apparently didn't bother the redfish.  I have no idea how many trout we caught, but the majority of them looked like they were born on the same day averaging between 16-19 inches.

Our best three colors were pumpkin-chartreuse, glow-charteuse, and avocado.  The trout had been hitting our soft plastics fished just beneath the surface on a quick retrieve, but most of our fish today came off the bottom regardless of the depth.  We saw a lot of shad, but the trout we cleaned were full of shrimp.

We did Church and relaxed yesterday, but I got two very good reports off Sabine last ight.  Robbie LeLeux and a friend limited on trout up to four pounds and also kept three slot reds that they caught on DOA shrimp under a popping cork.  They found the fish under birds in the mid-afternoon up on the north end of the lake.  The fish were chasing shrimp.

Chris Palmer and his crew waded all evening and never got the first strike before 5:30.  They got back in the boat just after dark with sixteen trout up to seven pounds.  "The fish just went nuts on us," said Chris. They caught all of their fish on pearl Skitterwalks and bone Catch V's fished very fast.  Chris added that they were covered up with bait and that they left the fish biting.  He also said the water was starting to look much better along the extreme southeast shoreline.

Hopefully the wind will give us a break as we will be back on the water for the remainder of the week.

Wind has us pinned down!

This wind has just shut us down.  We didn't even launch the boat today.  Yesterday we had great conditions for the first three hours of the day and found a few trout up on a shallow flat on the La. shoreline.  The bite didn't last long, but there were some very decent fish chasing mullet.  We caught a couple of trout under a Mauler and the other trout hit a Catch 2000 or a bone She Dog.

The water still looks pretty good all the way from the north end to the Dredge Hole in spite of the wind.  It may not after the north wind blows it out this weekend, but we will have to wait and see. It shouldn't get too bad as most of the cuts off Blacks are already down to the mud. The word is that the water on the south end of the lake is in really bad shape right now.  The bite down there would work in the wind, but the fish just haven't been in there in any numbers.

Until the wind eases up I think your best shot is to put on the waders, pick a shoreline, and fish evenings.  The fish are there, but it is darn near impossible working them out of a boat.

Wind continues to make things difficult

I have had enough wind and do not see any relief in sight.  The only thing worse than the relentless wind is knowing that the fish are doing their thing and you can't stay on them.  I cancelled all weekend parties and wound up fishing with friends for two hours one day and four hours the next.  We got wet in a 24 foot Kenner one day and stayed wet in a 22 foot Blue Wave the next!

We caught trout up to four pounds drifting red shad Assassins in four to six feet of water both afternoons.  We were fishing in the teeth of the wind and I believe the water clarity was probably a little better in the deeper water.  We really took a pounding while trying to stay on one stretch of scattered shell.  A drift sock slowed us down very little and we never caught more than one or two fish anytime we anchored.

I believe good catches of both trout and redfish will be fairly easy to come by with any break in the weather at all.  When the wind stays under fifteen miles per hour, even the gulls are working over fish.  The water is back up in the grass and the bayous are full so you can look for the flounder fishing to improve as well.