Colburn's Sabine Connection

It was white capping in the livewell!

No pictures tonight.  The pond was white capping and we worked hard for our fish today.  Our largest trout  may have weighed four pounds at best which was quite a change from earlier in the week.  Aside from the  pounding wind, we also had a very weak tide and the water stayed stacked up in the grass all day long.

We caught all of our trout on live bait in 3 to 4 feet of water.  We also caught a few redfish and one very nice flounder on swim baits in 8-10 feet of water.  There were not a lot of places that you could fish after about nine o'clock due to the wind.  I saw fewer slicks on the shallow flats than I have been seeing of late, but that could change for folks fishing tomorrow with  lighter winds.

We are going to do church tomorrow, do some serious praying for Brandy Racy, and come home and clean up the boat.  Brandy continues to show some improvement and her parents, Joe and Jennifer ask for your continued prayers.  There are some things that are tougher to deal with than a poor bite and too much wind!

Big Trout between Bolts of Lightning

Dodging lightning and thunderstorms has been an every day occurrence, but the trout bite has been worth the gamble. We have been catching some serious numbers of trout over four pounds with at least one or two in the seven pound class each day. At least for this week, the best bite on plastic has been very early.

This big trout was released to fight again!

Johnny and I fished the same pattern and enjoyed having customers release trout up to 27 inches long. We had five personal best fish in three days and the average trout has easily been 3 to 4 pounds. We quit early yesterday as there just wasn't any way of avoiding the rain and lightning and still finished with 13 trout up to seven pounds and two nice flounder.

The day before, we ran from the storm and returned after it blew through. The two boats had 35 fish not counting released fish. The tide has not made much difference as long as it is moving when fishing plastics. I think the live bait bite may be a little better on an incoming tide. Most of the big trout that have eaten plastics for us were hanging over shell from 3 to five feet deep. 

    Last trout before running for cover.

We have done well with the darker colors using a very slow retrieve.   We also found some solid trout under slicks in a little deeper water, but they were not as large as those fish on the shallow shell.  An agent from Parks and Wildlife measured and recorded our catches yesterday and he said that he had seen some very good fish caught off the south end this week as well.

I also talked with two local anglers this morning that limited yesterday evening on trout up to six pounds and they were wading the southeast shoreline. They had two trout over six pounds and all of their fish hit black-chartreuse head She Dogs in about four feet of water. They also caught a few nice reds casting back to the grass along the shoreline.

Jason released his personal best, but left with trout fever!

Do not forget that your La. license expires at the end of the month!

Big Trout on the move

The wind died down and outside of waiting out a thunderstorm or two, the conditions could not have been better both Friday and Saturday.  We not only caught good numbers, but continued to catch  big trout as well. I have no idea what has happened to the bite under the birds, but at least for right now, we could care less!

Bob Hood and Perry Morris with a pair of very solid trout!

I fished with Bob Hood and Perry Morris Friday and we were limited on fish up to 25 inches by 8 o'clock.  We caught our two largest trout on a MirrOdine, but most of the fish hit dark colored tails rigged on quarter ounce heads.  The best concentrations were working over scattered shell in 4-6 feet of water and were feeding on both shad and small shrimp.

The following morning, Johnny and I fished with doctors David and Mike Olson and friends and the fishing was just as good if not better.  We kept 26 trout up to six pounds and did not get on the lake until nine o'clock.  We launched at 5:30 only to huddle under the covered porch at the marina  and curse the rain and lightning  for three hours.  It was, however, worth the inconvenience!
                                  
                                     Dr. David Olson with one of several nice trout taken Saturday

We missed out on much of the easier bite, but still caught a lot of nice fish before the tide finally slowed down.  Most of our fish were caught on morning glory and Texas roach tails or swim baits in 5-8 feet of water.
The reds are also starting to school a little in the open lake, but you have to be close to the action when it starts as they do not stay up long.

 

Size much better than numbers!

We have really gotten a break with the light winds this week. I ran the entire lake Tuesday and Wednesday and in spite of perfect conditions, never saw any gull activity at all.  We fished an incoming tide both days and the water was in very good condition all over the lake.Tuesday and Wednesday we were not after numbers, but were looking for a big trout to grant celebrity status. Dave Masterson of Trophy Quest and Mustad Sales Manager, Jeff Pierce, got some footage of some very nice trout the first morning, but we missed at least two big fish that just did not want to be television stars!

Jeff and Dave admire one more nice trout!

We returned to the same area the following morning and the second fish I stuck on a green-chrome 2000 measured almost 28-inches and was a heavy fish that enjoyed her time on camera.  We caught several more big fish, none that topped that speck, before abandoning that program to try and catch a bragging size flounder.  We hit a home run with our trout both days, but we never caught that big flounder.

We found better concentrations of trout Monday evening in deeper water, but those fish have not been there in the mornings..  We are catching our fish in the morning making extremely long drifts in 2 to 4 feet of water or just starting on one end or the other of either revetment wall and working the whole thing.  We have not found any concentrations of fish, but the size is something else. We caught very few trout under four pounds this entire week! 

I have gotten several reports that the bite had improved at the jetties on both trout and reds, but I have not made that run.  It is hard to leave big trout even if you are not catching a lot of fish. I have seen enough big trout recently to warrant reminding clients to sign up for  the S.T.A.R. tournament before they drive over.   If you get a chance to get out this weekend, run from the occasional thunderstorm early.  They are intense and packing a lot of lightning. 

Weather was better than the catching!

I hadn't waded in two months and now we have waded the last two days out.  We made afternooon wades with a slow outgoing tide which has not helped our cause much, but the fishing has been decent. A bone-chrome She Dog and a pumpkin-chartreuse Crazy Croaker were our hottest lures until today.

I still caught a few nice trout today on the She Dog, but I got it put on me with a Storm Wildeye swim bait.  I thought my good buddies were throwing the 2000s they left the boat with, but I was wrong.  They really got a kick out of smoking me with their little shad colored plastic baits!

The water looked great, but we never saw very much bait working over the shallow flat bordering the Intracoastal.  Today we were wading waist deep water, but the fish were holding in about ten to twelve feet of water.  We would catch five fish in five minutes and then not get another bite for twenty minutes.  The trout were solid enough that we hung in there through the slack periods rather than load up and hunt a better bite.

I talked with Capt. Adam Jaynes on the water and he said they covered a lot of water for only a few nice fish.  They caught their fish wading also.  Adam has been catching lots of fish lately so it must have been slow on the south end of the lake all day.  The water all over the lake is in very good shape.

Wind was too tough to fish north end today

We ran across the lake early this morning, but the wind was already blowing 15 miles per hour at daylight.  We caught a few trout on our first drift, but by the time we started over, it was just too strong and we made a long bumpy run back to the bayous.  The tide was coming in this morning and the water was very sandy all over the north end as well as in the bayous.

We did manage to catch a few flounder and a red on Gulp and Pumpkin-chartreuse Sea Shads before quiting early.  The fish were hanging in about 8 feet of water in the outside bends.

We have finally managed to get a good run of days in, but I think we will give it a rest for a day or two.  If the wind should quit blowing, however, we will rest later!

Unexpected call cut a flounder trip short!

Tuesday was a crazy weather day, but if you could dodge the storms you could catch fish.  We elected early  to fish the bayous and wound up with a solid catch of flounder up to three pounds.  We also had several trout up to 24 inches that hit  Gulp shrimp.  We missed a lot of fish for some reason including a pair of big slot reds.

The folks that were able to skirt the morning rains also caught trout under the gulls on the south end of the lake.  We started out on our same flounder bite this morning, but an unexpected phone call aborted that program.  I certainly won't give up any name or the location, but a regular reader of this report knew that I would be on the water today and did us a huge favor.

He did not call after he caught the fish, but while he and his partner were catching them and they were still catching them when we got there.  You cannot get a better heads-up than that and it was appreciated.  He even  called again and waved us in on his spot when we arrived, but that was just too much.  The pattern was strong enough that we were able to fish the same type water several hundred yards away and still find some very nice trout.

The only change we made was switching to a darker Assassin, Texas Roach, and fishing a chrome-blue back MirrOdine.  They continued to catch fish on lighter colors, but we could not make them work for us. The wind blew much harder than it was supposed to, which was no surprise, so we did not look for gulls long.  The water was still in great shape with the exception of the Neches flats and Coffee Ground Cove.

I talked with Capt, Adam Jaynes while we were on the water and he said they found a few very solid trout and at least two sharks fishing She Dogs.  They stopped and waded rather than fight the wind out of the boat.

Thanks again for the unexpected call......that made my day!

More wind, but the bite was a little better today

I thought we were going to get a break with the wind today, but it was just more of the same.  We fished some pretty decent looking water on the La. shoreline early, but could not find any fish.  We fished an outgoing tide most of the morning.  When the tide switched around noon, we started working up in the bayous and found the fish hustling shrimp. 

We stuck with plastics and caught slot reds, some nice flounder, and a mixed bag of trout. I was a little surprised by the size of the shrimp we found in the fish we cleaned.  They were large! We did not see the number of slicks that we have been seeing on the La. shoreline, but the fish may have moved in there after we left.

The weather forecast says 5 to 10 for tomorrow, but I would not hang my hat on that. We will be there to find out.

Wind will not let up!

I haven't quit fishing...just catching.  After a glimpse of how good things can be last week, we have just been blown away thus far this week.  We pressed the isssue day before yesterday and should never have even launched the boat Wednesday.  I thought that maybe we had learned to adapt to the daily winds and just needed to be a little tougher, but this week has been impossible.  We added a little rainstorm to the equation this morning.

We are catching a few fish in the bayous and the river, but even that water has dirtied up with the huge incoming tides pumping the silted water in from the lake.  A day or two of even fifteen mile per hour winds would probably put us right back in the hunt.   We may give it a shot this afternoon, but it was already blowing at daylight.