Colburn's Sabine Connection

A great bite blown out!

We were in short sleeves and waders this morning, but it will take more clothes than that tomorrow.  We caught two very nice stripers in the river, the largest close to 20 pounds, before running to the lake ahead of the wind change.   The largest of the two stripers was Brock Lynn's first striper ever, so he may never better his first fish.  We caught both fish in 22 feet of water on black-blue tube jigs.

It was howling out of the south prior to the front, but we still caught some very nice trout up to 26 inches in the whitecaps.  I also got a call while still at the marina with an even better report.  At least one other local angler caught trout up to seven pounds fishing topwaters on the north end of the lake.  He was in a small boat and quit even earlier than we did.

We were back at the dock around ten o'clock so Brock and Melvin could leave for a duck hunt.  I hope they brought more clothes!

That same area, just off the intracoastal on the north end of the lake may be dry by tomorrow morning.  We caught every fish on an electric chicken Catch V.  The wind silted the water up badly, but there was apparently enough clarity for the trout to find us.  I have no idea how many fish we missed due to the wave action.  I never even felt two of the fish I caught until I started reeling in slack line.  I forgot how much difference Power Pro braided line makes when fishing in whitecaps, but I won't get caught without it again!

We will undoubtedly have to fish our way through a few days of dingy water after this norther sucks the water out of the marshes again.  The lake was as clear as it has been all year long, so hopefully it will not take too long to get that way again.   

Out of boat and into the trout

Unable to stand it any longer, we backed off gull chasing, put on the waders and climbed out of the boat Tuesday.  Roddy Quarles fed a 26 inch trout a black-chartreuse Corky Devil in three feet of water on his second cast and all was well.  We called it a day when his brother took water over his waders chasing a ten pound trout turned out to be a 27 inch redfish.

We finished with eleven trout that were all between 3-5  pounds.  We caught more fish on a bone or pearl-chartreuse Catch V than the Corky, but we fished the V's exclusively when we caught several fish very quickly.  As the water silted up from the wind, the trout continued to move into deeper water. 

I was going to reload my wading box today, but I just talked with Chuck and he had a good report from a group of waders that was very much in line with what we were doing.  As soon as I am finished here, I am going to spend the entire afternoon in waders.  It looks like this bite might get put on hold with the next big front due in Thursday night.  I am not nearly as concerned with the temperature drop as I am the 15-20 mph winds for three or four days.

Hate to waste a day, so I am out of here.  If you have a passion for wading for big trout..give us a call after this front! 

Redfish stealing the show

Jennifer Knight caught her nice red on the river.

We basically suffered through a weekend of early morning fog, low water and lots of 14 1/2 inch trout.  We did okay with the redfish, especially in the river, but never got locked down on any solid schools of keeper trout.  The lake continues to clear and the conditions were close to perfect, but the birds were very skittish and hard to work with any confidence.  Most of the trout we caught were chasing small brown shrimp.

We found the redfish easing up on the flats along the river channel in the afternoons and they were definitly chasing mullet.  Every redfish we cleaned was full of four to six inch mullet or had nothing at all in their stomachs.  I don't think the gull action is over as far as keeper trout are concerned.  I just had one of those runs where I was unable to figure out the better fish.  Worked hard...fished bad.

We are just now starting to catch trout in the five pound plus class working topwaters and Catch V's on the shallow flats.  It may be even better than I think, but I won't know until I get a group that has no interest in chasing birds and is willing to take a chance on the larger trout.  We caught some great trout on that pattern three days running two weeks ago and we haven't fished it since!

If you lost a waterproof bag on Sabine last week with a significant amount of tackle inside, call 886-5341 and describe the contents.  Skip James found it and will get it back to you if you can tell him what is inside.  It is apparently worth reclaiming!  If it is yours and you cannot reach him, e-mail or call me and I will contact him for you.

C-O-L-D but G-O-O-D

Jane Mitchell with her largest red of the day.

We froze our tails off this morning. Jane Mitchell flew down from Billings, Montana to join Dickie Hamilton of Baton Rouge on this trip and she thought it was cold......so I am thinking it was not my imagination.  Jane showed Dickie a good time in Montana fishing for cutthroats and lake trout so he repaid her with this outing.  I think it is safe to say that she now prefers stripers and redfish over those teeny little trout in Montana.  The Tetons, however, do have a slight edge over the Game Reserve and majestic Port Arthur skyline as far as the surrounding landscape is concerned!

Ironically enough, had the latches on all of my storage lockers not been frozen shut, we would have missed out on a great bite.The only plastics lying on the console, along with a few Hoginars, were striper baits.  I was ready to stop by the time we hit the river anyway so we went looking for stripers.  Forty-five minutes later we were limited out on fish up to eight pounds and returned to the River Rat Marina for more ice and a bathroom break.  We left the fish still blowing holes in the water.

Dickie and Jane with early morning stripers.

We didn't know it at the time, but we would not put another keeper fish in the box until 2:00 in the afternoon.  The lake was as flat as it could be, but we could not find the first flock of gulls.  When we did find them, they were on top of a huge school of reds and specks that we finally left a little after 4:00 p.m. That small group of birds never quit working and the fish never quit biting.

All of the reds were slot fish up to 26 inches, but we never caught a trout over three pounds.  Most of the trout were solid fish ranging from 16-18 inches in length.  We played fair for a little while with glow-chartreuse Assassin Sea Shads until the reds moved in, but quickly switched to Hoginars.  We made very few casts with the bladed lure that didn't result in at least a strike.

Jane was a wonderful sport putting up with our teasing all day, but I did learn one more thing about people from Montana, more specifically, the ladies.  They may be pretty and soft spoken, but you let them lose a good fish at the boat and they will expand their vocabulary to include some words I hear on a more frequent basis.

We had an outgoing tide all day long, but lost very little surface temperature as it was pushing 60 degrees when we left the lake.  For the first time in a while, the water in the lake looked better than the water in the Sabine.  It wasn't clear by any means, but there was a foot or so of visibility.   

It was Saturday...not Friday!

The perfect weather day following Thursday's big blow came one day later than I thought it would.  At least the weekend fishermen finally got a break.  Friday saw a stiff east wind eliminate much of the lake well into the afternoon.  The wind had the entire lake badly stirred up, but it was already clearing some by the end of the day. 

We found water temperature as low as fifty degrees in the marsh Friday morning, but most of the lake was running 56 to 60 degrees.  We ran from East Pass to the Causeway and never saw the first flock of birds.  We caught one nice flounder off the revetment wall and caught and released two big redfish in the river.  We did see several other nice reds caught on fresh shrimp in the river.

Today turned out to be the perfect weather day.   The fog made moving around difficult early, but there were more than enough flocks of gulls to keep folks happy on the north end.  The birds would slow down ever now and then, but they worked at least a little all day long.  The water on the norhteast side of the lake was the clearest we found anyhwere.

We caught a lot of trout, but never found a concentration of solid fish.  We finished with a nice box of trout up to three pounds, but it was one or two keepers for every ten fish we caught. The best two colors in Assassins and T.S. Split tails were glow-chartreuse and pumpkin-chartreuse.  The lake flattened out about 10 a.m. and stayed that way.  The gulls wouldn't hold well early, but they locked down in the afternoon.

The folks that stayed in the river did fairly well again on the redfish with fresh shrimp fished on the bottom in 12-18 feet of water.  The two big reds we caught the day before hit glow-chartreuse tails at the same depth,  Live bait is apparently a little difficult to come by right now!

No water at the launches!

Only ten days ago my clients waited for me to launch my boat and wade across a flooded dock so they could board without having to take off their shoes and socks.  Today, we postponed a trip when we were unable to find a launch in this area with enough water to float a boat!

I have seen some powerful north winds move a lot of water this time of the year, but nothing as hard and sustained as yesterday's blow.  You know it is a happening when the servers at one of the more popular local buffets are asking patrons what happened to the water in the bayou.  You can cross both Adam's and Cow Bayou in many different locations across the county and any cuts leading into them were  down to the mud!

The only launch that we found that was a possibility was the new public launch off Simmons drive on the east side of Orange.  There was still some water left at the end of the ramp, but I didn't know how far the ramp extended out into the river.  If you could have launched you would have needed a ladder to get back up on the dock.That launch is on the bank of the river itself.

I did watch some folks load up an airboat at Bluebirds Fish Camp, but had you been able to launch with an outboard, I seriously doubt that you could have run the cut leading to the river.  I still haven't talked with anyone that may have tried to launch at Logan's on Pleasure Island.

The wind has finally died a little and is supposed to go around to the southeast.  Hopefully, enough water will come back in tonight to make things easier tomorrow.  If you can get in the water it should be a fantastic fishing day as there is even more bait in the lake than there was two days ago!

We have an unexpected opening Friday

If you got caught in the wind today, it was because you left in the wind.  It has howled and will apparently continue to do so for one more day.  When it stops, the fishing is going to be as Chuck says, "stupid good".  We were already there, so I don't know how much better it can get.

I do believe that this will mark the beginning of the end for an exceptional flounder run and I hate to see that happen.  Once we start catching stripers every year, the flounder bite immediately gets tougher and tougher.  The bite under the birds will only get stronger and the big trout on the flats will be the next calling card.

I don't usually get this generic, but we had a big group cancel for Friday and I have far too much to do right now to try and recall all of the clients that said, " Just call me if something opens up."  Friday looks like it is going to be a great weather day, so if you were one of those folks, give me a call as soon as possible.  There are never any guarantees in fishing, but I will be on the water Friday with or without clients.  We have been waiting on this kind of wind, followed by a flat lake for months!

Perfect conditions...great fishing day!

Outside of a little rain the first few hours of the morning, I enjoyed a great day on the water with Rick Roberson and Cecil  Drummond.  The trip got off to a good start when we stopped on the river just long enough to cinch down the rain gear and check on the stripers.

I lost a 15-20 pound fish at the net on my second cast, Rick then broke a fish off, and Cecil put a seven pound fish in the boat in a ten minute period.  By the time we made it to the lake, it was raining even harder, but the gulls were all over the north end and solid trout were under every flock.  We steadily caught fish under the birds until noon on a weak outgoing tide, ran in for a shrimp burger, and returned to the lake to see if we could catch a really big trout on Catch V's.

We gave that program about thirty minutes without the first strike and went back to hustling birds under perfect conditions.  We wound up staying until darn near dark making "just one more" cast.  The lake was like glass, the birds were holding tight, and the shrimp were running for their lives.  It was fun!

We finished with easy limits of trout and three slot redfish.  Top baits for the day were glow-chartreuse Sea Shad, a generic pumpkin shrimp tail, and Hoginars.  The closer we worked to the Intracoastal, the dirtier the water got, but the fish were there.  Water in the middle of the lake looked very good with the surface temperature running around 66 degrees.

We never stopped to fish the area, but most of the boat traffic was between Willow and Johnson Bayou.  They had birds around them, so I am sure they were catching at least a few fish.  For those of you that can pick and choose your time, the afternoon bite is still much stronger than the morning.

Be especially watchful running the bayous.  We hit a massive strip of fiberglass matting that brought us to a quick stop in Adam's bayou.  We were able to get it off the lower unit and run on back.  There are still lots of floaters (logs) and other debris that have washed out in the north end of the lake since the last flood.

Southern gale alters program

I fished with Eric Lyons and Jay Miller Friday and a howling due south wind made things extremely tough.  Fortunately, we ran far enough south before the wind really got bad to get into some modestly protected areas.  We caught a few very nice flounder in the marsh, but were unable to fish slow enough to really do well.

I eventually elected to hustle birds in three foot waves and we managed to put together a good catch of trout up to three pounds.  Not surprisingly, we also caught a ton of smaller fish working the gulls on the south end.  That  has been the norm for me every time I have run south.  The only reward for running down there has been the redfish action.  As we fished our way back north, the specks were larger, but the wind just wore us down.

We found gulls working over solid trout in the mouth of every major bayou, but the tide was sucking out so hard against the wind that we took a real beating trying to hold our ground.   Had Eric and Jay not stuck with spinning gear we would have caught far fewer fish.  They both prefer casting tackle, but were willing to switch rather than fight short casts and backlashes all day long.  The lighter gear cost us a couple of big fish, but it was worth the trade off.

Glow-chartreuse Sea Shads produced every fish including the flounder.  The marshes were as clear as I have seen them, but everything was silted back up by the time we left.  The wind turned around today as advertised and blew equally hard so I doubt many folks fought the open lake.  We will be back on the water Monday morning for what may well be the best weather day of the upcoming week.

Founder on a tear!

We finished up two days of filming for the Fishing Insider Network and it was far too easy.  Normally things work very poorly when you try to film, but this was the exception.  We fished one flock of gulls on the way to the marsh and picked up three keeper trout and a 26 inch red in about ten minutes.

We then ran to the marsh and the flounder all wanted to be TV stars.  Over the past several years I cannot recall catching that many flounder without catching a single throw back.  Mike Denmon said he caught flounder up to five pounds the day before.  Our largest flounder had an 8 inch mullet in its stomach so don't worry about your bait being to large.

We did not catch a flounder under 16 inches with the largest pushing the four pound mark.  We caught almost every fish on pumpkin-chartreuse or glow-chartreuse Sea Shads rigged on a 1/8th ounce horse head jig.  Judy Wong proved to be as deadly on flatfish as she is on bass and Masterson even put the camera down long enough to put a couple in the boat.

He also had us using a scent in a bottle that the flounder couldn't resist, but stunk up everything in the marsh.  Anything you have to pour out of a bottle in the wind hits places other than the lure.  My truck, my boat, and my house now wreak of that fish attracting odor and I cannot make it go away.  You don't need a GPS to find out where we fished today, just follow the stench as I am sure it is still there.

I just took today's clothes out of the washer and my wife is not going to be happy.  I should have tried washing them by themselves.  We may have to burn a blouse and several towels as well!

The water on the La. shoreline looked much better until the wind churned it back up.  The same water that was 65 degrees two days ago was 73 today.  Maybe we can squeeze one more day in tomorrow before the predicted 20 mile per hour winds blow things out Saturday.  The gulls started working much earlier today than the day before and probably quit earlier due to the wind.