Colburn's Sabine Connection

It is G-O-O-D!

Mike and Richard drove down from Lufkin Wednesday morning and we fished all day long.  We just could not quit as the fishing continued to get even better after noon.  The wind has been dying about mid-day and the evenings have been much better than the morning hours all week.  The gulls hold longer and it is easier to see the shrimp once the birds leave.

We caught our fish on both the 5-inch Assassins and the smaller Sea Shads.  We did not finish with a trout that weighed an honest three pounds, but we did have a lot of solid 16 to 18-inch fish.  We caught and released a number of beautiful  reds and also caught some of the largest sand trout I have seen this year!

We turned our back on the gulls today and checked out two areas for an upcoming flounder trip.  In three hours we limited on reds(we were trying to catch flounder) and kept 6 very nice flounder.  We caught the fish on GULP and smoke-blue flake Tube jigs.  Don released one flounder that was easily over four pounds.

I feel certain the pond will be crowded this weekend as it has been pretty easy all week long.  Try to find your own gulls rather than chasing other boats and don't lose your cool over a fish.  Glow-chartreuse has been the color for us!

Perfect weather and lots of gulls!

The weather is drop-dead perfect this morning and here I am cleaning up the boat and disposing of a week's worth of torn up plastic tails.  When the fish are biting you can go through a lot of plastic in a week.  As soon as I finish I am going to eat something better than a pack of wheat crackers and a diet Dr. Pepper for lunch and watch football well into the night.

Steve Eason, Arlene Catania, and David Nelson drove in Thursday morning and they hit it just right. It was raw with the front roaring in, but all three were good fishermen and the wind proved to be little more than an  inconvenience.  Over the course of the day we did it all.  We caught redfish in the bayous and the river and even caught some of our better trout in 2 to 3 foot waves under the gulls.

David, Arlene, and Steve beat the wind for these redfish.

When you have more than one program going for you there is always the fear that you are going to zig when you should have zagged, but we lucked out Thursday.  We absolutely parked on top of the redfish around noon and caught slot fish after slot fish for a couple of hours on an outgoing tide.  They were chasing shrimp out of a small cut and they were piled up!

Steve said those reds made Arlene an artificial lure convert.  She started the day as a live bait devotee, but caught her fair share of fish on a Texas Roach Sea Shad.  We stuck with the four-inch Sea Shad all day long.

We started early and stayed late Friday for two reasons.  The first being that Wade Salazar is a sure-nuff grinder and the second being that I had not fished the late afternoon in a while.  I am not into staying all day long, but I wanted to see if the gulls were any more solid in the evenings and they were yesterday.  They held much tighter in the afternoon.   

Wade Salazar with nice slot fish he caught on Texas Roach Sea Shad.

Our problem most of the day was not catching fish, but catching quality fish.  We caught trout and redfish all day long under the gulls, but most of them were short.  I was also surprised at the number of 18 to 19 inch redfish we caught under the birds.  Most of the reds in the river and bayou are slot fish. I can assure you that there are a lot of fish swimming around in the lake with our DNA on them!

We ran back in the river for only about an hour around noon and the redfish were still there.  Brad Deslatte called about that time and said that he and his Dad were on some better trout in the lake so we ran back out and they were right.  The lake was dead calm all afternoon and you did not need the gulls as you could see the shrimp on the surface.

I much prefer fishing structure to chasing birds as I find the whole process very frustrating.  One flock flies off before you can put the troll motor down, the next flock is finally holding tight before three other boats race through them, one school of fish hits anything and the next school hits nothing, etc.  Those are all variables that you have to deal with every day to consistently catch solid fish under the gulls.

I know that at least one of the many boats out yesterday caught fish on other colors, but glow-chartreuse was good to us and Brad.  Darrell and I fished a Sea Shad and Wade stayed with a 5-inch Split Tail and did well.  I have now officially abandoned the idea of fishing the lighter jig head that is so good to us here on Sabine when fishing the flats.  A 3/8ths ounce is easier to throw in the wind and you an slow down or speed up your retrieve as needed.

It is probably even better on the south end of the lake right now, but there was enough action to keep us on the north end yesterday.  The water continues to clear and a lot of the marsh grass has settled to the bottom on the east shoreline.

I did narrowly miss a scary piece of debris in Coffee Ground Cove this week that will ruin a hull and lower unit.  I do not know what it is, but there were five metal rods sticking about four inches above the surface on a low tide.  It is on a line from the point of East Pass to the last rig before you get to Bridge Bayou.  It is now marked with only a Dr. Pepper bottle so keep you eyes open or run closer to the pipeline!   

  

   

Nice day....lots of fish!

Chris Jelinek fished with me for the first time in quite a while yesterday.  He has been on the injured reserve list following a very bad car wreck and still isn't completely healed up, but it was good to get him back on the water.   He climbed in the boat, announced that he was into anything I wanted to try, and we basically did it all. We caught reds and specks shallow, deep, under the birds, in the lake, and in the bayous.

The birds worked well up into the morning and we stayed with them much longer than I intended to.  When you can have flock after flock to yourself it can be a little addicting.  There were some very nice slot reds mixed in with sand trout, a few 16 to 18 inch trout, and a ton of small specks.  We went back to the bayous and the river around noon and easily finished the day with a nice limit of reds and specks.

Chris took advantage of the easy reddfish bite!

Chris came out of the blocks slow as far as landing fish, but he caught fire in the afternoon.  He poor mouthed his Curado until I noticed that it was only half full of line.  We stripped the rest off, filled it up with some new stuff, and he liked his reel again!

I think he threw darn near every color plastic in the boat at one time or another, along  with a DOA shrimp and GULP.  When you love to fish as much as he does and don't get to go very often that usually happens. I think he did the best with a pumpkin-chartreuse Sea Shad once he finally settled down.

The water clarity is still better in the river than it is in the open lake, but it isn't hurting the bite.  Most of the fish we caught under the birds were chasing small shrimp and we did much better fishing with shorter plastics.  We might have to fish in the rain again tomorrow, but this little front should drop surface temperatures and that helps.

I have not fished a late afternoon this week, but the live bait fishermen are doing well fishing shad on an outgoing tide right up until dark.  They are catching reds and some trout up to four pounds.  I also heard from a very reliable source that the birds are working even better late.  

Friday was a very good day to fish!

I didn't fish today, but we had a good day Friday as the front slowly rolled into the area.  We fished most of the day in a light north wind and a drizzling wind.  The tide poured out all day long and the water cleared in spite of the downpour the day before.

Jonathan Yarbrough brought a big group and Johnny and I split them up and went in two different directions.  Redfish were no problem at all, the flounder bite continued to improve, and we caught at least a few trout at every stop.  We had one trout that was just under five pounds and that is the best speck I have caught in a couple of months!

Johnny and his fishermen caught some fish on plastics, but they did the most damage with live shad.  They had their limit of redfish early.  We caught our fish on BLURP Sea Shad and the original Assassin Sea Shad rigged on a quarter ounce head.  Our best two colors were pumpkin-chartreuse and chicken-on-a-chain.

There was very little bird activity in the lake, but it should turn on quickly as the water continues to dump out of the marshes thanks to a north wind.  We found much of the north end of the lake still pretty dirty on Friday.

Phil and Tim with part of the morning catch!

Most of the ramps in the area are open, but it would be wise to make sure the spare tires on your trailer and tow vehicle are in good shape.  There are lots of roofing tacks and nails not only around the launches, but on the side of the roads in the south end of town as well.  Johnny had to patch a tire before we launched Friday morning!

Bite was slow, but steady.

I am not sure if it was the full moon or the extremely high tide, but the catching was not as easy yesterday as it has been.  There has to be something I can blame the difficult bite on. We still wound up doing okay, but they were not jumping in the boat!

The redfish once again saved our grits.  We made one run in a tough east wind and got in maybe five minutes of fishing under the birds.  The rest of the day we pounded the shoreline and shallow flats with BLURP Sea Shads and GULP shrimp.  Aside from one small school of reds that we found on a very shallow flat, it was one fish here and one fish there all day long.

Corey and Connor with a pair of slot reds.

Mike Cooley brought Corey Randall and his son Connor and Connor caught his first slot red out of that school on a pumpkin Sea Shad.  It may well have been his first red ever as they don't do a lot of saltwater fishing in McKinney, Texas. It was a long tug of war thanks to the light rod, the wind, and a strong 23-inch fish.  It was a rodeo from the time he announced, "I've got one!," until he finally led it into the net.

My fishing hat is off to 12-year old Connor.  He made two practice casts with a rod he had never used at daylight and stayed with us cast for cast for the next eight hours.  He was fun to fish with!

The easy bite may well have taken place early.  We talked with some friends on the water that caught a limit of reds fishing with live shad by nine o'clock.  They said the bite ended as quickly as it started.  They were fishing the shoreline on the east side of the lake.

If you are looking for live shad you better get to the DuPont Outfall early.  You are going to find that the shad are on the large side and they tend to disappear later in the day.   I am seeing a lot of perfect size finger mullet late in the evening, but that doesn't help unless you are looking for bait for the next day.

I am still catching a few fish in the river each day, but that bite has not really turned on yet.  We need a couple of fronts to blow the remainder of the dirty water out of the bayous and clear things up.

Very good day in a stiff east wind!

I would have preferred far less wind yesterday, but no one was complaining at the end of the day.  I fished with Rick Roberson, Marvin Watson, and Robert Hackman and they all fished well. I also think we got Rick over all of that "The fish bite the least when the wind is out of the east" stuff! 

 We initially got in just a little gull action in the white caps, but we made our day fishing the La. shoreline.We rotated through three small areas and caught a few fish every pass.  It was not difficult catching numbers, but size was another story. All three areas had submerged chunks of grass thanks to Ike and we just bumped jigs through that grass in 3 to 7 feet of water.  We caught fish on GULP, BLURP, and chicken on a chain Sea Shads.

Dr. Marvin Watson with a nice red that ate a BLURP Sea Shad.

We had some very solid flounder in the catch and most of them were well off the shoreline.  Our largest redfish was a 27-inch fish that ate a BLURP and our largest trout may have weighed three-pounds.  Most of our trout were 16 to 18-inch fish.  We went through some stretches of catching very few keepers, but we steadily caught fish all day long on a slow incoming tide.

We are catching some very nice flounder each day without specifically targeting them.  I think they are getting ready to crank it up.  They have been catching good numbers in Willow and Bridge, but the  Reserve closes Wednesday.

The middle of the lake and areas in front of the bayous have the clearest water on a good outgoing tide.  We have finally reached the point where the only bad smell coming out of the marsh is from dead animals.  I knew we lost a lot of gators, but Ike took its toll on the feral hog population as well!

Redfish biting better than trout for me!

We spent the day on the south end of the lake yesterday and it was a bad decision on my part.  We chased birds and chased birds and chased birds. There was enough action to  keep you hanging around, but the ratio of keepers to throwbacks was poor.  Fortunately,there were redfish mixed in with them and we worked one school of nothing, but redfish.

Gene Kellum not only caught a bunch of reds, but some big ones as well!

This morning I started out on the the same run in hopes of an easy bite, but the wind was a little stiffer and the water did not look as good about halfway across the lake.  We turned around and ran back to the Louisiana side and fished for redfish the rest of the day.  We were limited on slot reds thirty minutes after I put the troll motor in the water. Gene Kellum and Major Salcher caught and released redfish up to 26-inches all day long.

We fished a lot of different stretches of shoreline and caught at least a few fish on most of them.  The best lures for us have been spinnerbaits and BLURP Sea Shad.  Gene  stuck with a glow chartreuse Assassin Sea Shad, however, and caught as many or more reds than the rest of us.  He also caught a couple of flounder and some small trout as well.

The only shorelines we did poorly on were in Coffee Ground and that water justt looked terrible.  When we left around 3:00, the lake was flat and the birds acted like they were going to start working late. I have been hearing some incredible reports lately, but they have to be doing something differently or at least better than I am.

We are not going through those kinds of numbers of keeper trout and I have seen very few boats on the water this week.  Maybe it is happening in the late afternoon and I am leaving before the great bite even gets started. That is a very real possibility, but eight hours is enough. I would readily believe any and all redfish reports.  The shorelines are as close to a sure bet as you will ever get and we  stumble up on them schooling in the open lake as well on most days.    

Redfish still doing their thing

Up until about nine o'clock this morning, I was wondering if I had made a mistake postponing today's trip.  It was overcast, but dead calm and I was certain I had been too cautious once again.  An hour later, I was idling through town in a torrential downpour!

We had a very good day yesterday in spite of a roaring southeast wind that eliminated fishing in the open lake.  We had a huge incoming tide that lasted most of the day and floated a lot of debris back out into the river and bayous, but the redfish were still doing their thing.

The water and a ton of floating debris was just pouring through the smaller cuts like Burton's, but it set up well for Willow, Bridge, and Blacks.  We only caught a few flounder, but I talked with some folks that caught flounder up to four pounds in those bayous.  They caught all of their flounder as well asa few slot reds on gold weedless spoons.  The Reserve closes on the 15th!  

I don't know the number, but we caught a bunch of redfish and the majority of them were easily in the slot.  We had only one over sized red, but I would guess that no more than 5 or 6 of the fish we released were undersized.  My group had 2 or 3 fish on the line at the same time on a number of occasions and after keeping their limits, I would just lip the fish with the Boga-grip, remove the jig, and turn them loose immediately.   The bite lasted a long time!

We found the fish with some of the largest shad I have ever fished (there wasn't much bait available), but the bite was so fast on the jig that they all switched over.  We were throwing GULP mostly, but I threw some BLURP just so I could say I caught a fish or two and they bit it just as well.   The color made no difference at all.

If the lake flattens out by the end of the week, I look for the bird activity to pick back up.  We made one round in the whitecaps and there were scattered birds hunting, but nothing solid.  The river and the bayous were still very salty Monday

Good bite in a beat up lake!

Totally burned out on tearing out soggy sheetrock, etc, Gene and I toured the lake and fished about four hours in the process.  The water on the north end still looked bad, but there were birds working over small trout and slot reds.  We had no tide at all most of themorning, but the fish were still chasing shrimp.

The water out in the open lake looked much better, but there was very little gull activity.  We did stumble up on a couple of schools of solid redfish chasing shrimp and small ribbon fish.  All of those fish were slot fish and they would hit anything you threw at them.  We saw as many birds working at noon as there were at daylight!

We marked several major chunks of debris, but it is a daunting task.  Pieces of docks, rafters, entire walls, signs, 2x12's, and broken pilings are all over the lake.  The partially submerged single boards and pilings are dificult to see in any kind of chop.

We ran the west side of the lake and Johnny ran the east side in order to save a little gas, but we wound up on the east side when Johnny called us over to see what he had found.  We started dodging massive clumps of marsh grass and floating tree tops when we reached Bridge Bayou, but it was nothing compared to what we saw between Madam Johnson's and the Gator Hole.

No picture can prepare you for the amount of marsh deposited in the open lake between Madam Johnsons and The Gator Hole!

It looks as though Ike just picked up several hundred acres of marsh and dumped it in the open lake. We are not talking scattered clumps of grass.  A lot of it is as solid as anything on the shoreline and in some spots it stretches at least a quarter of a mile out into the lake.  We fished outside of it and there was so many submerged clumps that it felt like you were worm fishing on Toledo Bend!

Sidney Island also took a beating and is significantly thinner.  It almost washed all the way through in the middle of what is left of the island.  Stewts lost ground on the south end and Pleasure Island gave up ground on the north end.  The road on the north revetment wall is gone.  There are a lot of rocks washed up on top and in many places the asphalt is crushed or completely washed out.

There's not much road left on the north revetment wall.

The lake and the ICW really look strange with all of the cane and grass crushed and lying on the ground.  It is littered with everything from hot water heaters to clothes and a thick layer of mud has coated everything that did not blow away.  I think the fishing is only going to get better, but you better keep your eyes on the water...... even when chasing birds!