Colburn's Sabine Connection

Four days of rain washed out a very good bite!

I finally got my computer back on line last night, but there was very little to report anyway.  Three consecutive days of steady rain capped off with a flooding downpour Thursday morning washed out a very good bite that had been improving daily.  Albert Bates and I made a run Friday morning to assess the damage and I initially thought that we may have written things off too quickly.

Runoff in the bayous headed to the lake in a hurry!

When we hit the lake at daylight, gulls were working all over the north end and we caught two reds and a flounder in the first few casts.   Unfortunately,  we  quickly  discovered that the birds did not need the fish to chase the bait to the surface.  All of the fresh water flushed small juvenile shrimp out of the marshes and they were skipping across the surface in a survival mode.

A pretty good incoming tide was bucking the runoff current of both rivers and the water in the lake got dirtier by the minute.  When the tide did turn around, the clarity really went to pot as the chocolate colored water in the Neches and Sabine sucked even more of the floodwater out of the bayous.  Chuck made a run to the more protected marsh ponds and called later to say that they looked much worse as well.  There was so much floating vegetation in the river that the mouth of East Pass looked more like a pasture than navigable water!

I also talked with Robert Vail last night and he had basically the same report after an afternoon trip in the river and Black's Bayou.  He did say they caught two or three hybrids on live bait and this is very early for them to show up.

Hopefully we can dodge the never-ending Fay and things will dry out over the next few days.  The incredible redfish bite should rebound quickly, but this will certainly back up the trout bite.  You have to go to know, but I think I will be wasting gas money for the short term!

Redfish everywhere...trout bite improving!

We didn't fish long enough yesterday to write off the redfish bite in the river due to the runoff, but  it  had slowed considerably.  We only had a few hours to check out the lake, but that bite was much better than I anticipated.

There were quite a few boats in Middle and East Pass so they must have been catching something.  We ran a little farther south and found both keeper trout and redfish chasing shrimp.  The water was a little off-colored, but still in pretty good shape.  We had to leave the best bunch of fish we found due to a thunderstorm that passed pretty quickly.  We never found them again when we returned.

The best news was that even when we found only small trout, we did not have to deal with as many catfish.  There were still a lot of ladyfish, but I can live with that. I feel certain that you could have caught fish on anything, but we fished only She Dogs and a glow-chartreuse Sea Shad under a Kwik Cork.  We didn't have long to fish and we were getting bit so we were not into experimenting.

It was good to catch some solid trout again as the redfish have been carrying the load for us lately.  I guess the reds are everywhere, but they should be by now.  We found two good schools in the lake, Chuck has been hammering them in the marshes, and they were all over the river last week!

Bryan Sandow called this evening and said that he made a productive run with his daughters to the short rigs today.  They caught trout up to 25-inches on plastic and live bait and he said the water looked very good.  He added that the water at the jetties did not look all that good and that he did not see a lot of bait on the surface.

Happy Birthday....Blade!

I enjoyed one of those really fun trips today with two nine-year old boys that I believe like to fish as much as I do.  My grandson, Andrew, and I decided a great way to celebrate his team mate and good friend, Blade Broussard's, birthday would be a fishing trip this morning. It was a birthday to remember!

Andrew got the birthday party started with this big red!

I had already postponed yet another trip due to the wind last night and it was howling as predicted, but we got the boat in the water at 8:00, quickly caught some bait, and made our way upriver in a drizzling rain.  Before I could even get Blade rigged up, Andrew was cranking away and hollering for the net.  The first fish of the day turned out to be the largest red he has ever caught.  It was 30-inches long and weighed just over nine-pounds.

For the next two hours, all I did was bait hooks, net fish, take pictures, and exchange high fives. We laughed and cheered and just did silly stuff all morning. It was fun being nine all over again and acting crazy!

   Blade with one of several nice reds that attended his party.

Blade had freshwater fished with his Grandpa, but this was the first time he had picked on a redfish.  He went around the boat two or three times just hanging on before he landed his first big red, but he was up to the challenge.   I don't know how many fish we put back, but they each kept one big fish in their limit and released the rest.

The water was high and the tide was pouring in all morning.  I doubt that anyone tried the lake as it was whitecapping in the river.  The redfish have really been saving the day for us of late.  I am ready for the trout to do their thing, but we may be looking at one heck of a fall for catching reds. 

Redfish starting to do their thing!

We finished our trip Friday in a driving rain and started today's trip in a steady rain that took its on sweet time to slosh across the south end of Sabine Lake.  We fished some new water Friday morning after passing on windy conditions in the lake.  The river and the lake had also dirtied up a little more with runoff, so we spent most of the day in the bayous on the La. side.

When the tide started out around 10:30, a slow morning bite really improved.  We caught and released a lot of rat reds and finally boxed five slot fish up to 25-inches and a pair of 18-inch flounder over the next two hours.  We caught all of our fish on BLURP Assassins and GULP shrimp.

Peter Read caught his big red on a glow-chartreuse Assasssin!

It started pouring on us shortly after we picked our group up at the Holiday Inn on I-10 at 6:00 a.m. and did not stop until we shut the big engine down on the Causeway Reef to dry off an try to quit shaking. It was a cold wet boat ride at dawn, but once it finally quit raining it got HOT!

Johnny fished half the group and we finally left the jetties around noon with a handful of trout and 3 Spanish mackerel between the two boats.  There were not many other boats down there and we did not see any fish caught around us. The tide was pouring out and it was dead calm when we ran back into the lake.  The outgoing tide had cleared the water up pretty good and we found scattered keeper trout under the terns and gulls.

Everywhere we ran we saw shrimp on the surface and both the redfish and the trout were not far behind them.  Today was the first time since before Dolly that I have seen any redfish on the surface, so hopefully this is the start of that overdue bite. We finished the day with eight redfish that ate glow chartreuse Assassins or Hoginars. Three of the fish had to be tagged.

The lake was dead calm all day long so it was easy to see the fish when they chased shrimp to the surface.  The water on the south end looked a whole lot better this afternoon than the water on the north end looks.  The water on the east side of the jetties was pretty, but we just could not get anything going.

We beat on redfish in the river today.

The water in the river did not look as good today as it did yesterday, but we caught nine keeper reds and a lot of smaller fish  on spinner baits, swim baits, and Hoginars.  There was not much pattern as we caught them as shallow as two feet and as deep as eighteen feet.  The two largest slot fish came out of very shallow water, but most of the slot fish were deep.  Our largest red was only a 25-inch fish.

We caught more fish on a black-shad swim bait and a quarter ounce spinnerbait with an electric chicken BLURP body than anything else.  We caught only redfish on the spinnerbait, but we caught redfish, trout, ladyfish, bass, and a 10-12 pound black drum on the swim bait.  We will get back out in the lake tomorrow, but it was an enjoyable change of pace and we even found a little shade!

I did talk with two other groups that fished the north end of the lake this morning and they struggled.   They found ladyfish and small trout under the terns im Middle Pass early, but very little after that.  One of the groups came back to the Outfall and caught 4 flounder and a red on live bait.  It was a little warm, but the wind was not a factor today.

Reds and flounder back on the scene!

Gene and I ran a lot of the lake today and it gave up some clarity to the storm, but it is still plenty salty.  We talked with Eddie Hernandez and Skip James briefly and they said they had done well on flounder in the marsh.  The clearest water we fished was the shoreline between Green's and Willow Bayou.  The Sabine River is still in good shape as well.

   Storm stacked a lot of water up in the river Tuesday morning.
We caught a few fish on that stretch of shoreline, a few in Black's and the rest of our fish in the river. We kept a nice box of reds and one trout for supper while releasing several smaller reds and some small flounder.  The water was still up in the grass and the tide was coming in when we left.

Gene caught a solid slot red on a She Dog early, but the majority of our slot fish hit a Hoginar or Assassin fished right against the bank.  On several occasions the fish had already hit the lure before you could engage the spool. We ran a lot of slicks in the open lake, but saw very little bait on the surface.  We did see a few shrimp on the surface at the mouth of most of the bayous, but virtually no shad or mullet.

There is nothing quite like starting all over again.  Any time that big engine is running you are spending money, but you don't know if you don't go.  Outside of Eddie's boat, we saw only one other fisherman in the lake today.

Tough day for a tournament!

I have started this report three times in the last two days and lost power due to storms.  The first was unexpected, the second finished us off for the remainder of the night, and it looks like another storm is on its way right now.  I am hoping this sure enough storm in the Gulf goes somewhere else, but we are getting ready again. 

Triple X low tides, a killer west wind, and a 107 degree heat index shut us down Saturday. We caught a lot of small fish, but it was just tough.  Everyone I talked with struggled, most folks didn't even fight it, and the record field of 370 in the OCARC tournament just endured it.  The winning flounder was a very solid 3.63-pounds and the top two reds (27-inch max) were right at 7 pounds.  The top two trout were in the 4 1/2-pound class.

The jetties and much of the lake were blown out.  Most of the winning catches were made on live bait, but no one caught any numbers.  Many of the folks that fished the tournament said the night fishing was tough as well.  One of the highlights of the tournament for me was meeting Jordan Babcock at the weigh-in.
Jordan Babcock ices down 2nd place flounder in OCARC tournament.

Unlike his Grandfather and an old friend of mine, Willie Morgan, Jordan has a real passion for fishing.  He did not get that from Willie.  Jordan  took home second place money with a  very nice 3.12-pound flounder and already has his eyes set on a bigger boat and more tournaments!

I hope that I am filling up gas cans and buying bottled water for no good reason, but we have learned our lesson.  Hopefully, we will be back on the water by Wednesday or Thursday.