Colburn's Sabine Connection

Better trout and reds on the flats

It will surely get blown out for at least one day from the looks of tomorrow's forecast, but we had a much better day today.  Steve Aguillard fooled a 27 inch red right out of the box and the pressure was off.  We caught a jillion reds from 16 to 19 inches the day before, but the slot reds never hit the shoreline.

Even more enjoyable than the slot reds showing up again today was spending a couple of hours back in the lake after lunch. The trout and reds were all over the shallow flats up on the north end.  We had an outgoing tide and we just rode a stiff southeast wind on several long drifts in three to four feet of water.  We never repeated the same drift in order to look at more water. The clarity was as good as I have seen it for a while, but it was five degrees colder than the river.

Ron Rehfus got us started with several blowups on a bone She Dog, but all of our keeper fish hit Catch V's.  Our two best colors were bone-black back and black back-silver sides.  I was surprised at the amount of small mullet on the flats.  We saw redfish chasing finger mullet right up against the shoreline on several different occasions.

1 for the good guys....1 for the reds

Aaron Jablonsky was pleased with this big red.

Both yesterday and today started out on the cold side.  The dock and the boat were covered with ice this morning, but it warmed up okay by noon.  The water temperature made it back up to the mid- fifties for the afternoon.  It was 52.8 in the intracoastal at daylight.

Yesterday the water was as low as I have ever seen it.  Two more boat trailers had the axles jerked out from under them at two different landings.  Both launches are good, but they all have an end out there somewhere and somewhere got too close too fast!

After yesterday's trip, you would never have made Aaron Jablonsky and his grandpa, John, believe the trip today could have gone the way it did.  I fished with Mike Gertis and his sons, Jay and Jeff, and we elected to fish the same pattern and water as the day before.  You could have fished anywhere you wanted most of the day as the wind didn't get up until around noon.

After catching 40-50 undersized reds in the morning, I decided to fish only new water in the afternoon.  We fished three new stretches of shoreline and I have never seen so many small reds packed into such small areas.  For four straight hours at least one of us, or in many cases, most everyone had a fish on at the same time.  The bite never slowed down, but we could not catch a slot red out of all of those fish!

Yesterday we caught a pile of reds and the majority of those fish were undersized as well.  We did, however, catch our fair share of reds in the upper end of the slot mixed in with the smaller fish.  We also missed several other big reds that just pulled off.  Aaron had a big red go airborne on him and you don't see that tactic very often with redfish.

When all was said and done, he left with two big bags of redfish on the half shell.  Aaron had one more treat planned for his Grandpa at supper time.  I haven't heard what kind of rating supper got!

Grandpa John gave his red an A rating.

He very much wanted his Grandpa to do battle with a big red and we got that done in a hurry.  Grandpa John has caught his share of Walleye and lake trout, but he was quick to grant the redfish an A rating.  We fished the exact same areas that we fished this morning, but those better reds were not there today.  Most of our larger redfish have come out of very shallow water in the afternoon.

The water was not as clear as it has been today, but I do not think that had anything to do with the slot reds not showing up.  It was clear enough for every small red in southeast Texas to find our soft plastics.  Brian Petty left me a message saying that he waded the Stewt's area this morning and caught one keeper red and three small keeper trout, but another four man party wading a short distance away kept 16 trout up to 26 inches.

He caught his fish on a She Pup and bone diamond Assassin, but they told him that they caught their trout on a fire tiger Suspending Rogue.  Both the Rogue and Bomber Long A have been hot the past week or two.  Not many folks from this area fish either of those lures in the lake.  It may be time for us to dig around in the bass box!

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We'll be back on the water this week and find out if this rain slowed our bite at all.  It is time to get back after the big trout anyway, so we'll start running Calcasieu as well as Sabine over the next couple of months.  Thank you for all of the positive responses throughout the year and I'll see ya at the  Houston Boat Show..

Big Lake easier than Sabine

You can't complain about the weather when you leave the house in a downpour.  Rather than sit and wait for the rain to quit Thursday morning, we trailered to Big lake and had a better than deserved day.  Had we not gotten so caught up with catching 14-17 inch trout drifting a shallow reef, we would have done even better.

We eventually kept 14 trout from 3 to 4 1/2 pounds, but we released two trout in the 26 inch class and lost a sure enough big trout trying to pick her up with the Boga Grip so that we didn't have to handle her.  We caught most of the keeper trout on a pink Crazy Croaker, but the three largest trout all hit a bone Catch V.

The trout we caught drfiting the shell hit red shad and morning glory Sea Shads rigged on quarter ounce heads.  We stayed on the north end of the lake most of the day.

Bill Vautrain and Doug Reynolds talked me out of postponing today's trip on Sabine and I am glad they did.  When I called them in Houston late last night it was flooding here and the lightning was just unreal.  By daylight it had settled down and two hours later it was clear, but a little windy.

We caught two nice stripers in the first ten minutes and beat the banks of the Intracoastal the remainder of the day for a respectable box of flounder, redfish, and trout.  We went through a lot of rat reds and undersized trout.  We stayed with soft plastics, but I saw a solid three fish limit of reds that were caught on a red crankbait in the East Pass area.

Doug and Bill each needed one more species to complete grand slams and ironically enough they were looking for a fish the other one had already caught.  Doug had a striper, red, and trout in the box, but could not catch a flounder.  Bill only needed a trout to finish off his slam.  That should have been easy, but it was one of those days for him.  Every time Doug or I put another keeper trout in the boat he just laughed it off, but he really had a rare shot at a Sabine slam!

Hopefully we won't get any more rain over the weekend, but it looks like a pushy north wind is going to make things very difficult anyway.  I won't be fishing again until the day after Christmas.

I wish all of you and your families a very Merry Christmas and good health in the New Year! 

Intracoastal looking like I-10

It looks like the weather is on the verge of going to pot for a few days so this may be of little use to you.  We caught fish in the Intracoastal and river most of the morning.  The water was a little more off-colored than it had been, but it is still okay. 

We didn't fish long today and for the first time in many trips, we failed to catch a slot redfish.  We did catch striper, flounder, trout and small reds on soft plastics.  The tide was sucking out pretty hard early and we found the bite much better before nine o'clock.  Our trout were solid fish up to about three pounds and the few flounder we have been catching have all been in that 17-20 inch range.

We were going to spend some time in the lake, but the wind changed those plans and we quit early to do some Christmas stuff.  The warmer water has definitely scattered the larger redfish the past few days.  They will either bunch up again or leave after this next cold front.  I am hoping they bunch up in the deep holes again!

More trout and more boats

Jeff Johnston put this big girl back in the river.

We had more folks wanting to fish than expected and I apologize to those that I could not reach after quickly filling Thursday and Friday.  The fog socked us in early both days, but we still managed to catch a lot of fish.  We had to hit more spots Thursday due to added fishing pressure, but that is to be expected when you tell folks what you are doing and where!

There were fewer fishermen on the water Friday, but it still took a while to find new fish.  Surprisingly enough, we found more keeper trout than I have found in the past week, but fewer keeper reds.  We finsished up with 22 trout and three reds, but could have done even better with a little luck.  The trout moved up on two different 12 foot breaks off the river channel and were all over both pumpkin-chartreuse or bone diamond Assassins fished dead on the bottom.  Fishing with Power Pro braided line proved to be a real advantage as the trout were hitting very lightly.

Jeff Johnston took Thursday's opening and we caught a lot of really solid trout and redfish.  I think we probably did better with the longer Tidal Surge Split Tail in pumpkin-chartreuse, but we went through our share of Sea Shad as well.  We were forced to check out some new spots and it took a while to get a pattern working.  We found the fish upriver holding much shallower than those in the Intracoastal.

We made two very brief runs to the lake both days and did poorly in spite of perfect conditions.  I later talked with three different groups of local anglers that fish the lake on a regular basis and they all caught big trout the last forty-five minutes of the day.  Daryl Broussard caught his first eight pound trout on a red shad Corky Devil Thursday evening in two feet of water.  He said it was all but dark when the big fish hit.

We fished the same area in the middle of the day Friday and never drew a strike.  We didn't give them long, however, as there was a little too much boat traffic on the flat.  We had a weak tide change both days, but we found water temperature as high as 63 degrees. The water clarity on the north end of the lake is as good as it has been all year long!

Same song...one more verse

Chris Jelinek with a firne pare of Catch V trout.

This bite has benn so consistent that until it just goes to pot I can refer you to the day before rather than post anything.  We got hung up in a thick fog this morning and I was in a panic strut early on for fear that the show had finally ended. When the fog burned off, in spite of the fact that we had very little tide, the fish showed up again.  I hate to see this program dry up, but my boat is in one place and my heart is in another.  The big trout are already doing their thing in the lake, but we can't back off the easier bite!

The water was much higher and the temperature was up to 58 degrees which changed things a little.  We even caught flounder today and I haven't done that in a while.  We are catching more fish working the Intrracoastal now than we are in the river, but its the same pattern.  Once again, we went through huge numbers of small reds, but Chris Jelinek tagged a fourteen pound red and I had a trout just over five that hit a pumpkin Split Tail in 20 feet of water.

This one doesn't fall in the Rat Red category.

We fished the lake very briefly after lunch and the conditions were to kill for.  We only caught three keepers on two drifts, but all three trout were over four pounds.  We were cranking Catch V's in 3.6 feet of water.  The water on the north end of the lake is in great shape.  I haven't stayed in the lake long enough in the evenings to find out if the gulls are still working, but the trout we have cleaned are full of mullet!

If you like catching redfish....!

James Martinez with our only striper of the day.

My wife has meetings the next two nights so I will have to post the pictures later, but we made some good ones today.  We had an absolutely perfect day to fish and we did not waste it.  Mike Cooley and James Martinez drove in from Lufkin with James' father-in-law, Marvin, and we were on redfish as soon as I put the troll motor down.

Mike Cooley with his first Catch V trout.

When we made the shrimp burger stop around eleven, we already had a good box of fish and that had not been the case of late.  Most of our big fish have come after lunch, but it was all day today.  At the break we had easily caught and released 30-40 rat reds, but we had also boxed three slot reds, a nice striper and a pair of three pound trout.

We drifted one flat on the north end of the lake after lunch and Mike's first trout on a catch V was a solid five pound fish.The trout were holding over scattered shell in 2-4 feet of water.  The water was as clear as I have seen it in quite a while.  We caught five more in the three to four pound class before yielding to a wind that wasn't supposed to blow.

We finished up back in the Intracoastal and the redfish were still doing their thing when we quit around four.  We never did get a real good outgoing tide, but it didn't seem to matter.  The water temperature was back up to 54.4 degrees today.  With the exception of the Catch V trout, we stayed with a variety of tails rigged on quarter ounce heads.  We probably caught most of our fish on a Tidal Surge Split Tail and the five inch Assassin.

It will be Wednesday before my wife can get the pictures up.  I don't even know how to hook this little camera up to the computer, but I know that is part of the process.  Hopefully, I'll have even more pictures after tomorrow's trip.   

If you are not fishing right now...you ought to be.  It won't get much better than this and it looks like we have some very favorable weather the remainder of the week.  I do not know how I wound up with Thursday and Friday open, but they are at this point.  Let's go before it freezes again and I am back to having to write those two and three fish reports.  As easy as it is now, those trips are never far away and hard to forget!

I am still cold!

Wade French caught the best red fish of the day.

It was too cold to fish today, but we fished anyway.  The latches on every compartment of my Blue Wave Extreme were frozen solid until 9:00.  At 6:00 this morning, I was touring Orange in the dark and backing my rig down at several ramps without unhooking it, just to see if we had enough water to launch.  Seeing a trailer in the middle of the launch with no axle the day before makes one overly cautious!

When all was said and done, we wound up back at the new launches off Simmons Drive in Orange and had no problem at all launching in spite of the low water conditions.  Those are some incredibly fine ramps.  All but frozen at noon, Wade French, Sam George, and I went in search of warmth at The River Rat Marina.  Naturally we ate, but Ronnie Burton had a big pot of hot coffee waiting when we arrived and we eventually regained feeling in most of our extremities.

We had one redfish in the box at that time and were proud of it.  I knew we were facing a challenge when we checked the water temperature in Burton's ditch and it was 40.2 degrees.  The water in the intracoastal was 14 degrees warmer!

We were back on the water by 12:30 and were limited on 23 to 27 inch redfish an hour later.  When they turned on, it was just crazy.  We continued catching and releasing for another hour before calling it a day.  We were still catching fish, but had to load up and trailer back to the marina to clean and package the fish.  It was a very aggressive bite, but you had to crawl your bait  across the bottom.

We found our fish deep earlier, but they were trying to move shallow by the time we left. We caught a large number of fish vertically jigging a fifteen foot break.  Bone diamond and solid white were easily the two best colors today.  We also did much better with longer tails like the Assassin than we did with the shorter Sea Shad.  The only disappointment was the fact that I was unable to locate the big trout we stumbled up on the day before.

Had the wind ever given us a break, we may have done even better.  There were a lot of fish between Old and New Cow bayou stacked on the breaks, but you didn't get many casts per drift.  The stripers never showed up for us today either.  I salute both Wade and Sam as they caught a lot of fish strictly because they were tenacious enough to endure the weather.

As good as the Intracoastal and bayous have been, I still cannot wait to get back out in the lake.  Judging by the number of fish we cleaned that had shrimp as well as mullet in their stomachs, we may still have some solid gull action remaining if the wind will ever quit blowing.

No water, but lots of fish

Brad Deslatte with one of many reds he caught and released prior to front.

We  have just had two incredible back-to-back days of fishing in spite of the weather.  Yesterday I fished with Brad Deslatte and we had it all going on ahead of the front.  Chuck Uzzle was scouting and he called me from the lake to say that he was in the middle of the only birds on the entire lake and...he was! 

By the time we got there, he had already limited and for the next thirty minutes it did not matter where you cast, you were going to get a strike.  I am sure it would have lasted longer, but the wind immediately picked up and the gulls and the sun disappeared for the remainder of the day. Everything came to a screeching halt in the lake at 10:30.

I talked with Sammy Hall that afternoon and he said they ran a lot of the lake and never saw the first gull in the evening. We returned to the intracoastal and the river and caught a kazillion redfish up to 26 inches.  We also found the stripers schooling very late in the day, but never caught any more trout.

Sam George and Wade French with good fish on a cold day.

This morning I fished Wade French and Sam George of Tyler.  When we launched at daylight, the north wind was doing it's thing, the water was dropping out fast, and it was cold all day long.  Sam started and ended our day with identical eight pound stripers that hit a bone diamond Sea Shad.  Once again, we caught an unreal number of redfish with the largest going 27 inches.  Aside from catching so many fish in miserable weather, the highlight was the fact that we finally found the specks on a shelf in the intracoastal again.

Wade and Sam both caught bragging size specks, but all of the trout were very solid fish.  Sam had some kind of slam going on as he caught a striper, a speck, a red, and a black bass on the same soft plastic.  We caught most of our fish, every species, on Sea Shads and a Yamamoto grub that Wade broke out after lunch.  The best colors were pumpkin-chartreuse, solid white, and bone diamond.

We caught fish from the I-10 bridge to the Intracoastal in water anywhere from three feet deep to fifteen feet deep.  With the exception of the stripers, most of our larger fish, especially the trout were deeper.  The trout may have been there all along, but I had not been fishing that area deep enough.  We will know tomorrow if we still have enough water to launch.

On the return trip, we saw our worst fear at one of the Marinas we passed.  An angler was standing in the middle of the launch with his boat still in the water and his boat and trailer about half way down the launch.  The axle was no longer under the trailer.  Regardles of where you launch, there is an end to every ramp!