Colburn's Sabine Connection

A week of fishing lost to the wind!

I haven't quit fishing.....I've just quit catching.  We tried to get on the water four times last week that included a trip to Toledo Bend. In the first hour of the first trip we caught four big trout on Corkys and a chartreuse Mirrodine XL.  The south wind immediately picked up to 20 mph plus and we caught one more trout over the next six hours.  It has not let up until today.

It actually didn't let up today, it just changed directions and is blowing equally hard. We had near perfect conditions on T-Bend Saturday, didn't see any slicks, but had a good trip that included one bass over six pounds.  I had several calls while on the water from folks at home, however, and they said the wind was still blowing pretty good out of the south.

I feel reasonably certain that the bite on Sabine will have changed by the time we try to get back on the water next week..  The water temperature has continued to warm, the better sow trout are  ranging further out into the lake, and the gulls have already been working over big shrimp.  The bite will be more user-friendly, but I don't think we will see the numbers of 26-inch plus fish we saw last month.

Hopefully we won't have a repeat of last year's never ending winds that erased an entire spring.  

Great weather, but the fishing was just okay for us.

I just have a minute, but maybe this will help you a little for the weekend if the weather will hold.  It was cold this morning, but the water temperature did make 61 degrees by the end of the day.  Up until around 9:30 we had no problem getting bites on Assassins and Catch V's.  We found fish on the flats and there were some small trout and slot reds under a few birds.

An ESE wind was very fishable all day long and we had a big incoming tide all afternoon.  The water was in surprisingly good shape all over the lake and especially clear in the mid-lake area.  We found a lot of baits and slicks in 3 to 5 feet of water, but did not catch another fish until 4 o'clock.  The fish finally started doing their thing late.

The largest trout we got to the net was easily in the six pound range, but we pulled off another big fish that bolted at the boat and pulled off.  We stuck three other big fish that we never saw that could have been reds.  We didn't start catching those afternoon fish until switching to a pink Corky.  The later it got...the shallower the fish got.

I cleaned a good mess of fish at the end of the day that included a flounder that ate a Corky Fatboy, but it was a very so-so day considering how user-friendly the conditions were.  I am either fishing worse lately or the fish are just making some darn good adjustments!

Can't get it right two days in a row!

It seems as though I have had something going on every night for the past week and have not had time to post a report.  I haven't established a pattern that would help anyone anyway.  I have done far more fishing than catching lately and I don't know why.  I just cannot get it right two days in a row.

I have fished some new clients this week and it has been feast or famine for me.  While it never makes me feel any better, the group that had the toughest day fished hard from daylight until dark. I just could not figure the fish out and we released one 26-inch trout and two smaller fish.  The following day we fished well, but still only caught four trout.  The next day we returned to the same spot in a howling wind and rain and caught 31 trout before noon!

I have also been catching fewer big trout and I attribute that to the fact that the water temperature has been in the mid to high sixties lately.  The big fish are moving further away from the protection of deeper water and they are much more scattered.  We fished in waders yesterday morning, but never got out of the boat.

The fish were slicking up in deeper water and we would catch 2 or 3 fish per slick, run back and do it all over again.  A pink Skitterwalk and a bone-silver She Dog produced most of the fish.  They would probably have hit anything, but it is so much fun to catch them on topwaters.  The "go to" lure for me is still the Catch V or 2000 in a pink or chartreuse-pearl pattern.

We also found some very solid trout working  small shrimp under terns and I have been riding past terns every day.  We only fished one group for a few minutes, but they worked the entire time we were on the water.  They were working over slot reds in the afternoons last week, but we were doing too well on trout to fish them very much.

I spoke at the Northeast Houston CCA Chapter meeting last night and they had a great turnout in spite of the bad weather.  I started working with them several years ago and the core group is like family now....a bunch of really good guys. Ron turned the President job over to Brandon Jones this year and he will be a good one.  A lot of you know Brandon from fishing the redfish circuits.

We'll fish a northeast wind tomorrow and go eat crawfish at the Sabine-Neches CCA Banquet in Beaumont tomorrow night.  Yet another night on the road.  The Holder Show is up next and I always look forward to that annual event.  If you want to talk fishing with people that know what they are talking about, that is the show to attend!

Do not be surprised if you start hearing good reports off the Causeway reefs any day now.  I hate that program, but it can be addicting when you get it right.      

   

Wind hasn't hurt us....yet!

I had to drag out my "I can go at a moment's notice" list this morning.  I had a late cancellation and after having a very successful scouting trip the day before, I was not going to waste the effort.

I eventually had to guarantee Todd Smith that he would catch a speck over five pounds to get him to drive over, but I felt the odds were pretty good so I did just that.  If it didn't happen, I promised to help him finish burying a water line all day tomorrow.  Is that a hell of a deal or what?

The wind was blowing in the exact opposite direction today, but the water had cleared up enough overnight to fish the other side of the lake.  We caught seven solid trout before Todd broke his personal best  by three pounds.  The speck was a tad shy of 28 inches long and weighed a little over 8-pounds on the Boga Grip.  He can dig his own ditch now!

I don't think he ever actually touched the fish.  He held it up with the Boga, I took the picture with his cell phone....I hope, and we released her.  He wasn't overly excited about his fish, but If it is possible to be disappointed about catching an eight pound trout...I was.  Shortly after he caught his big fish, I thought that I had finally topped the 10 pound mark for the first time in too many years.

We have gone through quite a few 25 to 28 inch fish recently and this big trout absolutely stoned a chartreuse-gold Catch V in less than two feet of water.  She was just over 30-inches with her tail closed on the check-it stick so I decided to weigh her before putting her back. She didn't look skinny, but she didn't weigh anymore than Todd's fish. She must have been on a lo-cal mullet diet. I sure wasted a long fish. 

When I balked at the idea of leaving the trout to hunt a redfish for the pit, Todd called it a day and I took him back to the landing.  He was more excited about going white perch fishing this weekend on T-Bend than his trout.  He must have known something.  I ran back out and never got bit again.

We had an even better day yesterday.  Following the unreal storm before daylight, the wind just howled out of the west until about 2 o'clock.  The water was exceptionally high and we picked up everything from plastic bags to 6 gallon gas tanks floating on the flats.  There were several new floaters between Sidney and Stewts and a partially submerged wall or skid in the middle of the ICW by West Pass.  I marked two of the floaters today with green detergent bottles, but I didn't see the skid.

Both redfish and trout were feeding in 2 to 3 feet of water all afternoon.  Our largest trout was only 5 1/2 pounds, but we caught a lot of nice fish.  Larry Strickland called us over right after catching and releasing his first eight-pound fish, but he air mailed his favorite Corky looking for a better fish today.  He will get more and he will be back.  He has paid his dues this year and has turned loose a pile of big trout looking for one double digit fish.  He felt like he had a swing at one yesterday, but it pulled off after a long fight.

The water clarity is not great, but still clear enough.  The surface temperature has been between 63 and 66 degrees all week. The fish I have been on have moved farther out into the lake each day with the warmer temperatures.  Weather permitting, I have a full book next week so I doubt that I will fish this weekend. Be safe and mark any floaters if you can.       

You had to be there!

I have caught trout the past six weeks in weather that I just would not fish in past years and I now know that I obviously missed  some great opportunities..  The hours of discomfort associated with fishing cold muddy water in a 25 mph wind had nothing to do with my reluctance to fish in those conditions. I simply had no confidence that the fish would chase an artificial lure in water better suited for planting corn.

Today was the "icing on the cake" for me.  Had I not had three hardy young clients from Pennsylvania that didn't know any better, we would never have left the dock, must less catch fish.  The wind was blowing a modest 15 mph when we made our first drift about 8:30.  We caught five very nice fish on two drifts before the wind escalated to about a zillion mph.

We ran for cover in Black's and caught only one small trout.  We got our courage up, ran 400 yards out into the lake and retreated.  We ran back to the river with no results, got our courage up again, ran a half mile out into the lake from a different direction and retreated again.  Finally, saddled with no option other than calling it a day, we strapped everything down and bucked the waves.

We saw only one group of waders in Old River Cove that can tell you how rough the lake was...no one else was out there!

Chad caught his largest trout on an Assassin rigged on a 1/8th ounce head on the first drift of the morning.

The water was 55 degrees and so chopped up and dirty that you could not see your lure six-inches under the waves.  The first roller coaster drift amazingly produced five keeper trout with the largest fish just a tad over six pounds and they missed at least that many more.  All I did was net fish, put new Assassins on their jig heads so they wouldn't have to give up their foothold, try to keep everyone on board, and shake my head in disbelief.  The next drift yielded three more good keepers and so it went for over an hour!

We had all the trout they wanted, but we really quit because we were taking a beating.  I may pass on fishing in water that rough next time, but I will never worry about the water being too dirty again.  It can get fresher and I am still convinced that would hurt, but I now believe that trout will hunt your bait down in diluted mud if the salinity level is okay.

I guess everything is relative as Justin said the waves weren't that bad compared to Lake Erie!

We started each drift in 4.2 feet of water and ended them at about the 3 foot mark.  The deeper fish were all smaller (16 to 19-inches) with every big fish hanging around that 3 foot mark.  I was leery about drifting any shallower as I did not have my waders in the boat and I did not want to get stuck before I could get turned around. 

I am going to give it a rest this weekend, but the crowds should not be a problem with even stronger winds predicted.  If you go, avoid the shallows early with the hard outgoing tide, but don't worry about your favorite spot being too dirty...if they are there they will bite.   

Not great, but better than the last trip!

It doesn't get much better than this!

Rusty Frederick and I fished together for the first time today and he is the real deal.  He takes his fishing very seriously and I enjoyed his company.   He doesn't waste a single minute of his fishing time.  It was windier than we would have liked, but still very fishable.  We ran the lake and looked at some water that I hadn't checked out in the past month.  It kills me every time I ride by that stretch from Madam Johnson's to Greens.  That is a lot of good wading real estate covered up with chunks of grass and mud!

 Rusty and a couple of his friends decided to fish Sabine Lake this winter rather than their East bay haunts and they are figuring it out pretty quickly.  They haven't made a lot of trips, but most of them have yielded at least one fish over seven pounds and good numbers of 5 to six pound trout. 

Rusty put this nice trout back after tricking it with a Corky.

We waded most of the afternoon and caught six trout up to 8 pounds and two slot reds on Corkys, Mirrodine XL's, and a Catch V.  The water was still a little dirtier than it has been and a stiff east wind wasn't much help.  We had a good incoming tide, but the water was a little cooler than it has been.  The better bite has almost been too deep to wade, but that should change with the warmer forecast for the next few days.

Tought afternoon!

I didn't fish today and probably missed out on a decent bite.  All we have needed is a little break in the wind and we sure didn't get that yesterday.  We fished a little while in the afternoon until my partner developed a a bad leak in the left leg on his breathables.  (There are no good leaks) When it filled up and started running over into the other leg we called it quits!

It was windy and and the water just continued to get dirtier.  I think it was a combination of runoff from all of the rain the day before as well as the wind. I did see one seven pound trout and a couple others caught on Corkies, but I never got the first strike.  I deserved a day like that after all of the good ones we have had lately.  Water temperature was still in the upper fifties and we had a good incoming tide.