Colburn's Sabine Connection

Happy Thanksgiving and the gulls are still doing their thing!

I wound up with a cancellation for today and I have no doubt that we missed a good one.  We certainly had a good one Tuesday.  It was cold and a little windy early, but the lake flattened out later and the gulls worked from the time we got there until we left.

As good as it was, for most of the morning it was equally frustrating.  There were very few boats on the water and there was never a time when you could not see five or six flocks of gulls left unattended.  Until around noon, however, each flock would yield one or two keeper trout, a red or two, and small trout until you just got tired of catching them.  It was the same thing with every group regardless of how cautiously you approached them or what you were chunking!

Even when the birds finally settled down and it got crazy good, we never established one color as being any better than another.  We probably caught more solid trout fishing a Sea Shad or cocahoe type grub under a Kwik Cork, but most of the reds hit the same lures bounced off the bottom.  You would be hard pressed to come up with a color we did not try and we caught at least a few fish on all of them.

For the first time in a while we found very few birds working the Louisiana shoreline.  The water over there was much dirtier than it was in the mid-lake area.  It was fairly dirty on the north end as well, but it sure didn't slow the  birds down.

We are starting to see fewer and fewer shrimp so I don't know how much longer the gull action will last.  Its going to be tough having to work for our fish again.  The good news is that we did see a lot of mullet on the flats that we checked so the big trout will not be far behind. It looks like the north wind may be a factor again this weekend, but the birds will still work over whitecaps.

I pray that tomorrow finds you sharing a special day with family and friends and that all are in good health.  Happy Thanksgiving and I will see you on the water!  

No way today!

I am on my way to a playoff football game so I'll have to make this one quick.  What a difference a day makes.  Thursday, I fished with Gene Kellum and we fished anywhere we wished on a perfectly flat lake.  The birds worked, the shrimp were still getting chased to the surface even after the birds left, and life was good.

We were surrounded by reds hustling shrimp to the surface when Gene picked up this nice fish.

The only bite that did not work for us was in the river.  We fished it early and late and it was poor.  We caught a lot of our better fish under a Kwik Cork and I had not been fishing the cork much lately.  We also did much better on pumpkin or roach colors later in the day.

It was all we could do to run to the lake and back to the launch this morning.  It was very cold and the wind was howling, but we had to go see.  It is not a good sign when the gulls are headed north and you are headed south. I was back working on the Boat Club at 9:30 and happy just to have my boat back on the trailer.  We were losing water in the bayou fast!

For those of you that have fished with me before and know that I am very reluctant to test any bad weather forecast, I did call my client the night before and again early this morning, but the response was, "I am committed and I will be there."  I have never had a client that likes to fish as much as Mike Cooley so I was not surprised by his reply.  Had he been alone, he would have stayed all day long without a second thought in hopes that the wind would quit for one hour.

And you thought you really liked to fish!  

Beautiful day and catching to match the weather!

The boat ride was the coldest of the fall, but it quickly warmed up Monday morning and we had a really good day on the lake.  There were very few boats chasing a lot of birds and that always works. We are also catching much better trout under the gulls than we were even a week ago.

GregSoileau, Kevin Hutcherson, and Tony Fernandez were finally able to cash in a CCA trip they bought at a Northeast Houston Banquet at the first of the year and we had perfect weather.  We had already postponed the trip three times due to weather and one of those proved to be a hurricane while the another was a tropical storm. I am surprised we didn't have a winter storm Monday!

Greg caught this nice trout under the gulls.

It took a little while for the gulls to start holding over the fish, but when they did it was easy.  We switched from the shorter Seas Shad to the 5-inch Assassin and Tidal Surge Split Tails in both glow chartreuse and Roach and caught fish all morning.  We left the lake early as they needed to get back to Houston for minor things like a wedding anniversary, etc., but we already had a very good box of fish anyway.

We stopped in the river on the way back just long enough for Tony to catch a very nice red on a spinnerbait.  We also picked up a couple of more trout before calling it a day. Our flounder have been a little slow in coming around, but I don't think the fishing can get much better than it is right now!

Tony picked up this nice slot fish in the river on a spinnerbait.

The surface temperature in the river has been in the low 60's for a week so the stripers will also start doing their thing any day now.  We have had several big trout taken in the last few days by folks willing to turn their backs on the bird action for a slower bite on the shallow flats.  I know of one nine and three other trout over seven-pounds caught on a Skitterwalk, a Catch V, and a Corky Devil this week.

If you do not have to stay overnight and want to take advantage of a very good bite, give us a call.  I still have a few open dates that I did not expect as several groups have had to cancel due to no vacancies at the local motels due to Ike. Call 409.883.0723 and leave a message or possibly catch me on the water at 409.313.3120. 

Pittmans had it going on!

We fought a pretty tough east wind yesterday, but the fish cooperated and I had a great time with the Pittman family. Jeff invited his brother, Bill, and his son, Ryan, down for some saltwater fishing and he could not have picked a better day.  It was overcast, windy, and chilly most of the day, but its easy to stay warm when you are catching fish.

Pastor Bill and Ryan broke the ice early.

Bill, a Pastor in Forest, Mississippi, climbed out of the truck before daylight and announced, "Jeff has fished all of his life and I don't know much about it, but Ryan and I are excited."  Twenty minutes later, he had his first slot red in the boat, Ryan had landed two keeper trout, and Jeff was sliding the net under his own four-pound trout.  It was all downhill from there!

Do you think Ryan might try this fishing stuff again?

We fished birds all day long in the mid-lake area and never had a lull in the action.  There was another set of gulls always working within sight until the time we quit.  We caught our redfish and trout on glow-chartreuse and roach Assassins, but the larger fish wanted a longer bait with a paddle tail rather than a straight tail.  Everyone I talked with had a good day, but most agreed that the bite was much more solid after noon.

The surface temperature in the lake was 63 degrees, but the river was 7 degrees lower.  The water was also surprisingly clear considering the hard rain the night before.  Look for the stripers to start doing their thing!

You just had to be there!

You had to have a helluva good reason to be bobbing around in some serious waves on the west side of the lake this morning and we did.  We were enjoying redfish nirvana!

It took three clients that didn't know any better to agree to even make that miserable run at daylight.  Justin Landes, Mark Burkett, and Chad Bealer are from Pennsylvania and they are down here with their company to kick off a big job tomorrow that includes very little leisure time over the next few months.  It was raining and the wind was howling when they climbed out of the truck and not one of them had a raincoat, but they headed straight for the boat anyway.  I forgot how invincible you are as a young man.

All three were soaked to the bone after the first two stops, but you are not as concerned wiith the wet and cold when you are catching or breaking off redfish non-stop.  A drift sock guaranteed us a soaking and it only took one attempt at stopping with the Stake Out-Stik to abandon that idea.  For the better part of two hours we plowed our way from one flock of gulls to the next and all of them were working redfish.

Chad Bealer and friends wore the fish out all morning long!

I have no idea how many they caught and released while I worked to keep us in position, but on more than one occasion at least two of them had slot reds on the floor at the same time.  They released every fish they caught until I talked them into keeping a couple and trying them on the half shell.  They will wish they had kept their limits if they do it even half way right!

We ran to the La. side later in the morning to fish more protected water and I think the fishing was even better.   We didn't catch as many redfish, but we caught and released several limits of trout up to three pounds before noon.  The gulls were locked down and you could fish a single school of trout as long as you wanted.  We kept one limit  of 17 to 20-inch trout right before quitting so that I could take my Mom a few fresh fish.

It took all three of them a while to get the hang of it after we left the suicidal reds, but we caught all of the larger trout swimming a five-inch Assassin just beneath the surface.  The only reds they kept were running with those trout.  This morning was the first time this fall that I have found the trout stacked up in 4 to 6 feet of water without having to rely on the gulls.  They were consistently larger fish than we have been catching under the birds.

I am sure the Pennsyvania gang is wondering what all the big hoopla is about bay fishing on the Texas coast.  There is absolutely nothing to it provided you can stand a little inclement weather. It looks like we are in for some more nasty weather the next couple of days as well, but I just might fish anyway if it stays this good.  I know better and I still can't say no!

Big trout were AWOL for us Saturday

The conditions were much better yesterday and we caught more fish than the previous two days, but we never got on the big trout all day long.  That is perhaps the most frustrating part of relying on birds to do your work for you.  One day every school of fish you hit is the right school and the next day you find yourself buried in sand trout and reds.  We finished with a good box of fish, but you leave the lake feeling like there was something better.

There was not a bird around when we got into the best school of reds of the day.  We were drifting in a stiff wind when everyone in the boat got a hit at the same time.  The largest red that we hung, which pulled off at the boat after along fight, hit a Hoginar.  The rest of them hit chicken-on-a-chain Sea Shads.

We did find a far better bite in the marsh right at daylight than I have found in a while.  The trout that were there were solid fish and we kept one solid slot red before running out to the lake. The river bite may improve in the near future as I saw more bait on a weak incoming tide and the water was much clearer.  

Flounder roundup tomorrow..not Sunday!

Before getting into today's report I would like to thank Chad Sodolak for his email pointing out that the 8th is on Saturday...not Sunday.  That means the flounder roundup to be hosted by TPWD and Chester Moore will take place Saturday morning rather than Sunday as I had posted earlier.  I hope the fact that I cannot read a calendar does not mess up some fishing plans and I also hope that more folks are able to fish the event on a Saturday.

Thanks again Chad for pointing that out!

We fought a very tough north wind that lasted all day long.  The water was more off-colored than it has been in the lake and the marshes were emptying like someone pulled the plug.  Naturally there were very few folks out today but the fishing was not that bad.  You had to work at it, but the birds did their best to help out and the redfish bite was especially good.

The ratio of keeper trout was also good.  We caught all of our fish on plastics, both the 5-inch Texas Shad and the smaller Sea Shad.  We shared a couple of schools with two other fishermen that caught their fish on Traps and gold spoons.

We finished up in the river and caught our best fish of the day in 17 to 22 feet of water on the Sea Shad. The water in the river was more off-colored today as well with all the water pumping out of the marshes.  The marsh fires have just about burned out so smoke has not been a problem.

Flounder roundup set for Sunday morning!

The last couple of days were a little tougher due to a stiff southwest wind, but the birds still tried to work a little.  The water was more off-colored up on the north end, but still in good shape in the mid-lake area.  The water was high and still coming in when we left.

We wasted the morning scouting out a different program that I hoped would work and it did not so we do not need to discuss that.  We ran back to the lake and fished  birds sitting between the whitecaps southeast of Pleasure Island and caught some very solid trout on Sea Shads and five-inch split tails.  I kept a few big sand trout because I was responsible for supper and they were good! 

Do not forget that you can help our flounder situation if you can fish Sunday morning.  The annual flounder round-up was canceled because the SALT clubhouse did not survive Ike, but Chris Bean is letting the TPWD set up at his facility on the Neches.  You cannot launch there, but you can bring your live flounder back by boat or drive in on Ferry Road.

They will have their truck there to collect the flounder between 8:00 and 1:00 pm.  The flounder have to be Texas legal fish.  Keep your live well running and aerated as even one live flounder is far more valuable than a box full of suffocating fish! 

Larger trout starting to move on Sabine

I spent the day trying to help get the Boat Club back in one piece, but I apparently missed a very good day on the water in the process.  The biggest improvement over the past few days has been the number of trout over 25-inches that have been caught.  Surprisingly enough, several of them were taken under the birds.

We are also starting to see more big flounder every day and there have not been a lot of folks fishing strictly for flounder.  Everyone seems to have their favorite color, but I don't believe you can go wrong right now with Roach, pumpkin-chartreuse, or glow chartreuse.  This little front due in Friday may change things some, but the most solid bite is still in the evenings.

It was tough trying to fish the bayous on the La. side across the weekend due to the smoke, but it will get better with a north wind. That will help those anglers interested in helping the TPWD collect flounder for breeding purposes on Sunday morning.  I do not have a lot of information on the round-up, but I do know the transport truck will be stationed at Bean's launch site until noon.  That location is on the west side of the Neches just south of Veteran's Bridge.

If you are interested contact Tim Carlisle at [email protected] for more information.

Fishing on Halloween can be scary!

There is apparently more than debris to watch for in the open lake right now.  I was just out looking around yesterday afternoon when I eased over to talk with Gene and Sherry Bouillion.  While we were talking, I was shocked to see maybe the largest cottonmouth I have ever seen (and I have gotten close enough to get bitten a few times in the past 63 years) swimming toward their boat.

This trick-or-treater came calling well before dark!

Incredibly enough, we were at least three miles out into the open lake and had just finished working a flock of gulls.  I eventually got him in the boat, but dropped him once and had to catch him again. In spite of the fact that he was back on high ground, he was really in a bad mood.  It is just not their nature to be nice or show any gratitude.  I did discover that a snake can get better traction on the floor of a Pure Bay than you can in Crocs.

I also discovered another use for Brian Little's new and improved version of the Stake-out Stik.  It will pin a snakes' head down long enough to pick him up without getting bitten.  Gene was not into getting close enough to get a close-up shot of the size of this snake's fangs, but they were impressive.

This shot gives you a better idea of how far out in the lake we were.  I will check floating debris a little closer before picking it up as it may hold an unwanted surprise.

I was going to keep him in the livewell and release him in the La. marsh on the way back, but I would have had to go through the catching process all over again and that might have been my third strike with no help had I screwed it up.  I elected to just put him back in the water and wish him well, but I will watch the water a little closer over the short term.  I had one climb through the jack plate and over the transom several years back while drifting the Causeway Reef!

The lake was dead calm again for the afternoon session and the gulls held really tight.  I caught and released at least two limits of 17 to 19 inch trout and three very nice reds before and after the snake.  I talked with Brad Deslatte and his Dad on the water and they did very well with a fast retrieve under the gulls.  Brad's Dad caught a 26-inch trout late and Brad said he missed one larger than that at the net!