Colburn's Sabine Connection

Only time will tell, but that was a lot of rain!

We had a pretty good day going today and it may have been even better had we been in an ark.  It rained and stormed all around us, but when it finally set in it presented more problems on the road than on the lake.  I couldn't even find my driveway to back my boat into the garage!

With even more rain scheduled for Saturday, this is going to have to slow down what has been a very good bite over the past several weeks.  If it doesn't rain another drop we will be a while getting rid of all of this runoff water.

Thursday was tough only because of the wind.  We got in a couple of hours on the La. bank with a southeast wind, but when it switched to the south the party was over.  We still caught some very nice flounder in the bayous, but it wasn't the bite we were looking for.

With the exception of the monsoon, we had almost the exact same winds today.  The trout were still hitting She Dogs and Top Dog, Jr.s and the flounder were all over pumpkin-chartreuse Sea Shad.  Our largest trout wouldn't make four pounds, but they were all good solid keeper fish.  I don't know if the flounder bite is finally slowing down or not, but we caught more small flounder on the main lake than we have caught all year long.  I know we had to measure at least a dozen fish.

We made one big round all the way to Blue Buck, but saw very little gull action early.  Both the shad and the mullet pouring out of the bayous were finally perfect sized for live bait fishing, but we never gave them a try.

I can't draw maps in trying to help folks catch fish and save a little gas money, but I try to include as much helpful information as I can and still have room to run a business.  I received a recent e-mail from a fishermen that apparently misses very few reports asking if I could be more specific when I report that we caught trout in 2-3 of water over shell. 

Anyone that fishes Sabine Lake on a regular basis knows that noting shallow shell may be the most specific part of my reports as we just don't have a heck of a lot of shell in the whole lake.  Outside of the reefs at the Causeway and some small reefs on the north end, you have to do your homework to find isolated patches of shell.  Some of our small, but more productive mini-reefs on the La. shoreline were buried under a foot of mud by Rita.

Because we don't have grass for cover either, I usually do better by targeting true structure like ditches or small humps and areas where the bottom changes from sand to mud.  When we are catching trout over shallow shell, we have eliminated lots of water in Sabine!         

Weather man missed today!

The lightning and rain Monday coupled with Tuesday's forecast led to us once again postponing a scheduled trip.  It seldom fails that any time I back a trip up I run anyway to check new water and have a good day. When I could stand it no longer, we left the house late and squeezed in a four hour scouting trip.  It never rained the first drop, but we did fight a pretty stiff wind.

We apparently got in on the tail end of a very good morning bite as we caught seven trout up to 26-inches on a Catch V and a bone-chrome sided She Dog as soon as we shut the big motor down.  The water was pretty off-colored, but there was lots of bait working the shoreline.  After two hours of practice casting, we caught two slot reds and one over sized fish to end on a positive note.  I hope that we left those fish biting as we made only one drift and called it a day.

We didn't check a lot of water, but the areas we fished were all off-colored.  We never even stopped in the river, but it was as dirty as I have seen it in a while.  It has been in great shape and should clear up quickly if we can avoid too much more rain.  I cut through the marsh on the way back in and was surprised to find several of the backwater lakes we fish in August-September already to grassed up to even run.

That was not a problem this time last year.  Chuck told me late last week that he still had a good bite going, but a lot of the water he fly fishes is already choked up very badly. One of the trout that we cleaned today had a small bream in its stomach.  Maybe we need to start throwing more fire-tiger!    

Wind stopped and the fish started!

Cole with a fat four-pound speck

The wind backed off Thursday and Friday and we got in two very good days.  The Peterson family fished with me Thursday and we had a great time.  We actually found very few gulls to work, but were fortunate enough to find several solid schools of fish chasing shrimp to the top. The boys kept their Dad and I busy unhooking fish and untangling lines, but he caught his fair share when he had time to cast.

All of the Peterson's got in the act

I got lined out early on when I expressed concern that we would have to have a little luck as timing and location are critical right now.  Nine year old, Cole, immediately responded, " Don't worry, If God wants us to, we'll put meat on the table!"  This was there first shot at saltwater fishing and I think we caught at least one of every thing before the day was over.

We kept our string alive with two more big trout, but most of the school trout were in the 16-18 inch class.  We did much better with dark colored Assassins even though the water clarity had not changed much.  It was silted up badly in the morning, but continued to clear with the incoming tide.

Earl and Peggy Theiss drove in from the Hill Country to fish with me Friday and we had one of those special days.  Once again we found some solid trout with Texas roach and Pumpkin-chartreuse Sea Shads. but the best trout of the day ate a bone-chrome She Dog.  We already had a very good box of trout when we found the big trout feeding on a 2-3 foot flat right in the middle of the day.

Earl Theiss with one of several big trout that ate his bone-chrome SheDog

There was no indication that they were there until I had a 24 inch fish blow up on a Super Spook.  From that point on, it was the Earl Theiss Show as he quickly bested my fish and worked his way up from there.  The largest of his specks just sucked the lure down and headed east.  He did have two in the 5-6 pound ranged that blew sizable holes in the water!

As good as all of this sounds, and it was good, there was a premium for being in the right place at the right time.  We could have just as easily done very poorly both days had we not stumbled up on solid schools of fish that were not even under the birds.  It can be very frustrating knowing the better trout are in the area and trying to decide to stay or cover water when they do not quickly show.

The later it gets each morning, the more panicky the anglers get and there is lots of boat traffic through prime water at much too high a rate of speed.   We are finding far better schools of fish idling around smaller areas than covering lots of water in pursuit of gulls.

Most of the trout I have cleaned lately have been full of eggs.  We have been on a run of late with big trout that has surprised me.  With the exception of Friday, we are catching only one or two a trip, but they are big ol' fat trout.  Johnny caught a trout on a Spook while talking with us that would push six pounds Thursday and Chris Allen said that he and Tracy Stringer broke off a trout that may have gone double digits a few days earlier!

We released a 27 inch fish in all of the wind earlier in the week that was obviously full of eggs that hit a Poppa Dog.  I do not fish that lure very often, but we have done well with it when fishing choppy water.  I think it is a much better lure with a bucktail added to the back end.

Still haven't fished Sabine Lake!

Brent Reninker checks out Bobby's first fish - EVER!

I fished Tuesday with Brian Reniker and his sons Bobby and Brent and they still can't say they fished Sabine Lake.  The 10 mile per hour wind that was supposed to subside during the afternoon hours only increased.  We tried twice to run the open lake, but it was just too rough.

They can say that they fished all around it, however, as we hit every backwater spot I knew that was semi-protected and finished with a respectable box of flounder trout, and one slot red.  We fished some awful shallow cuts and every available bayou most of the day.  We had a very poor incoming tide which really made us work for our fish.

Bobby and Brent caught their first ever flounder which is a tough fish to learn on, especially with artificials.  It was Bobby's (14 years old) first fish period, but 12 year old Brent had already caught a few bream in his young career. We caught every fish on Sea Shads in Texas Roach, Pumpkin-chartreuse, and phantom-chartreuse.  The largest flounder was 2 1/2 -3 pounds, but all of the flounder we kept were good solid fish.  Most of the trout were in the 16-18 inch range.  We caught a lot of smaller flounder that were still running the banks in 2-3 feet of water.

I didn't fish today, but talked with two other guides that said that conditions were better, but the fishing in the lake wasn't much easier.  The water was still silted up from all of the wind and it was difficult locating the better trout.  There were a lot of small trout hustling shrimp under the gulls in the southwest corner of the lake.

Thunderstorms limited boat traffic and catching

Steve Osborne and his son, Jim, fished with me Saturday and we spent more time running from storms than fishing.  The first one roared across the lake much earlier than usual and sent all of the sane folks packing early on.  We ran back in to the River Rat because of the lightning, but returned to the lake as soon as it blew through, only to get drenched by the next two storms.

In spite of the unfavorable conditions, the trout tried to work in basically the same areas they had been in all week long.  We were forced to abandon the lake most of the day, but we still found solid fish chasing shrimp over 2-3 feet of shell.   The fish we caught prior to the first storm hit She Dogs.  Jim caught the largest, a 3-4 pound trout, that literally beat his lure up before finally taking it down.

The fish we caught prior to the third and final monsoon hit plastics.  We found those fish in the open lake blowing up without any birds around.  We caught them on glow chartreuse and pumpkin Sea Shad.  Jim really wanted to fish school trout with his fly rod, but it was a losing battle fighting gale force winds out of a drifting boat with no stripping basket.

He managed to  somehow catch one undersized trout in the morning session on a Clouser he tied the day before.  It was a chartreuse pattern that included a few hairs from a family pet that will observe fly tying sessions from a greater distance in the future.  We finished the day with a very nice flounder and missed a few more smaller fish while riding out our final soaking on the Intracoastal side of the Islands.  They also hit the same colors in the Sea Shad.    

Trout bite ended too quickly for us

Paris Horton with our first and best trout of the day

We started out like a house afire, but the rain put the fire out pretty quickly.  We started the morning with a trout that pushed the six pound mark and another five-pounder on the first drift.  Both fish hit a bone She Dog in three feet of silted up water.

We then ran a few single gulls before the bottom dropped out,  The rain and lightning  eventually slid on by, but it blew hard all day long.  We made an unscheduled run back to The River Rat, got something to eat, and headed back out once the rain stopped.  We spent the remainder of the afternoon in the bayous catching and missing a few flounder.

The water still looks pretty darn good considering all of the rain the past couple of days.  The daily showers have been scattered, but intense.  I heard that the water looked bad on the La. shoreline, but we ran over there today and it must have cleared overnight because it looked good to me.  We were trying to beat a southeast wind, but the storm ran us off before we could get started.

Slow start...great finish!

Pat Murphy and his son, David, fished with me today and we had another good day.  Its got to get tougher again sooner or later and I initially thought it was going to be today.  We had a pretty stiff northwest wind at daylight and boxed only one four pound trout in the first three hours of fishing.

The wind called it quits around 10:00 and the bite was on until we finally left the fish still biting.  We caught trout on Texas Roach, glow chartreuse, and Morning glory Sea Shads rigged on 1/8th ounce heads.  Any time the jig made it to the bottom you had to deal with a gafftop.  We have also started catching a lot of sand trout the last few days.

Johnny was scouting for a Friday trip and we were working the same area when he lost all but the head of a three pound trout to a shark.  Thirty minutes later, I had a 4-5 foot shark take both my trout and She Dog.  The topwater bite was good, but it is cheaper to lose soft plastics than topwater lures so we passed on that bite! The water is getting saltier and clearer by the day which is one reason for the unwanted intruders.  I don't mind gators, but sharks are another story. 

I visited with John Sexton and his family at the funeral home here in Orange last night.  He came home ( he was one of Bob Crew's Sabine Reserve gang here in Orange growing up) to bury his Mom who passed away unexpectedly earlier this week.  John is a good guy and a good fisherman that most of you have probably visited with at the Castaway Booth at one of the Houston Shows.  Our prayers are with John and his family tonight.

Choose your gulls well

I am not  sure, but I think it took longer to ride out to the lake than it did to limit on trout yesterday morning.  The first set of birds we worked were on good trout and they stayed on the surface until we left them.  I had a Texas Roach Sea Shad tied on when we left the dock and never had to change colors.  My customers were throwing DOA shrimp and they never changed either.

We could have just as easily chosen the wrong set of gulls out of three or four choices and caught only smaller trout or at least a mixed bag.  Given that option, we have done better leaving fish as soon as we catch one or two small ones unless we have youngsters on board.  Its all about catching anyway and a 10 pound or 10 inch fish is just one more bite and another tug on the line!

We ran to the jetties only long enough to watch a few other folks catch some fish.  They were catching everything from trout to small Spanish Macs on plastics and live shrimp under a popping cork.  In the brief time that we were there, we caught one 12-15 pound red on a bone diamond 6 inch Sea Shad and broke off another that could have been a submarine as it never stopped!

The water all over the lake is in really good shape and the larger shad are rafting up during the hotter hours of the day.  We have been struggling to catch slot reds thus far, but it won't take them long to find those shad.

 

If you can stand the heat, it is FUN right now!

We lost one day to the wind this week (we fished,but it was tough), but there was little to complain about most of the week.  Jim and Dan Starr Friday and we chose to fish the bayous and river rather than run to the south end of the lake against a pretty stiff wind.  It proved to be a good decision as we finished with a very good catch of flounder, redfish, and specks.

We fished an incoming tide all morning long and the shrimp were stacked in the deeper water.  Most of our fish hit Sea Shads rigged on quarter ounce heads.  If it had a brown hue, whether it be pumpkin chartreuse, Texas Roach, or drunk monkey....they ate it!  The trout hit a chrome She Dog as well, but we preferred the soft plastic as it didn't eliminate any of the big three for us.

Johnny and I got out before dawn Saturday morning with Bridge City Dentists, David and Mike Olson and friends, and it was good that we did as it got very hot around noon on the lake.  The wind was ripping at daylight, but completely died by mid-morning.  We were able to run the entire lake and it made catching much easier.  Once again, there was a lot of traffic on the lake, but there were enough birds working to keep folks scattered out.

I have caught larger trout under the gulls, but it has been a long time since it was that easy to catch quality fish out of every school.  We finished the day with 45 fish and could have quit well before noon.  Johnny was in the "catch and release" mode by 10:00 o'clock.  We had a more consistent bite shying away from the larger groups of gulls and concentrating on one or two birds or surface activity.

I really don't think color had much to do with it as we caught them on everything from glow-chartreuse to LSU Sea Shads.  We did seem to get more strikes per school with the smaller bodied plastics.  When the fish were up, we would swim the lure and when they were not chasing shrimp on the surface we bounced it on the bottom.

I don't know that most of the fish were in the southwest part of the lake, but most of the birds were.  Most of the boats were also there.  The water continued to clear all morning and it is salty!

South wind slows great trout action

She Dogs and lack of wind resulted in these two nice fish

What a difference a day can make. We fished a dead calm lake Tuesday and caught fish all day long.  We caught trout anywhere from two to fifteen feet deep.  The deeper fish were all over Sea Shads and Chub Minnows fished on quarter ounce heads.

We were already close to a solid limit of fish when we ran south to try out the topwater bite and it was on.  The first three trout that ate a chrome She Dog were all over five pounds.  When that bite slowed, we caught them on a mullet colored Catch V.  We finished off the day in the mid-lake area catching and releasing trout up to three pounds that were chasing shrimp under only one or two gulls.

I called Bob Crew in to fish the same school and he called to say that those trout held in the same area long after we had called it a day.  He deserved some easy catching after spending the entire morning towing two anglers from Bridge Bayou all the way to the Causeway.  He launches on the north end so that was a long unexpected haul.  That's the same Bob Crew that answered the call to help us pick up tournament anglers stranded in the marsh last year!   

Wednesday morning the wind was already howling when we hit the lake at daybreak.  We ran the entire length of the lake hoping to find calmer water and a few gulls working on the south end, but it was not to be.  The highlight of the day was runing up on the largest school of surface feeding trout I have ever seen.  We boated six big keeper fish before they disappeared in the white caps, but it was something to see.

We caught our last four keeper fish of the day working small flocks of birds sitting on the water in the Blue Buck area.  The water clarity was going to pot all over the lake by the time we left, but it already looked exceptionally bad in the southwest corner of the lake and along the north tip of Pleasure Island.  Because the water in the bayous and Sabine River still looks so good, I am sure the lake can settle out overnight if the wind will let up.

I postponed today's trip at the last minute due to predicted winds for today and we made a good decision.  It is blowing even harder than yesterday right now.  Hopefully, it will back off some for the weekend fishermen.