Colburn's Sabine Connection

Trout slow after front....reds still crazy good!

Twenty-four hours worth of howling south winds temporarily did a number on the water clarity on the north end and a portion of the east side of the lake as well Thursday.  By Friday morning, the wind had switched around to the north and the water was low to boot.  The one thing that was not low was the surface temperature as we were fishing 70 degree water by mid-afternoon.

The closest we came to even seeing a trout was one big blow-up on a topwater plug and we even stayed with it a little longer than usual as the conditions continued to improve.  I fished a group that was content to grind it out , but I was still a little concerned when the first two stops in the dirty water yielded one small slot red. We didn't start catching redfish until we ran further south, but once we found them, limits came pretty quickly.

We caught the majority of the fish on TTF Trout Killers and Assassin Die Dappers in roach and stinky pink rigged on 1/8th ounce heads, but Jim Arnold broke out a 1/2 ounce chrome Trap and also did well with it when we weren't around too much grass or unmarked crab traps.  The further south we ran, the better the water looked early, but most of the water we fished continued to improve over the course of the day.  

We caught a lot of reds in some areas that have not been particularly good for me lately which was encouraging, but for the first time in a long time we failed to catch any of those double digit fish that shouldn't be around right now anyway.  Aside from an entertaining day with some very good fishermen, the fact that the bite slowed very little in spite of the dirty water was also a good find.

I will never take any bite for granted, but the reds bit right on through two freezes and now in very dirty water so you have to believe the numbers are just incredible.  Trout or no trout......I'll take it!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

he highlight was finding fish in some different areas and continuing to catch a lot of redfish in dirty water behind a front.

  

Wind is howling, but the reds are still biting!

This is going to have to be quick.  My wife has had the computer tied up for two days trying to decipher my book keeping for income tax purposes and this is my one shot.  The trout bite got a little tougher once again, but we are still just killing the redfish.

We canceled this morning due to the wind, but had a great day Tuesday and a very good morning yesteday.  The water was a little dirtier yesterday than the day before, but little else had changed.  Pat Van Winkle brought his son, Nick, and regular fishing partner, Tom, with himTuesday and we caught fish from the 2nd or 3rd cast on.

   Nick pointed this one towards the south end of the lake and turned her loose!

We kept our string alive with at least one red over 14 pounds and I have no idea why this many redfish that size are still in the lake.  We caught everything very shallow on tails.  Three of us stayed with the proven Die Dapper and Flats Minnow XL, but Pat fished one of everything Academy has to offer and caught at least one red on most of them.  We caught a few trout late as well, but we didn't stay with it long.

The following morning we limited on reds and caught nine trout in less than two hours before they had to get on the road.  Today was just out of the question and I am hoping that 24 hours of wind hasn't dirtied up the flats too badly.  I am going to talk about what is working for us right now on Sabine and answer some questions at the Golden Triangle CCA Chapter's membership meeting at Munro's Cleaners located behind the Pig Stand on Calder tonight.  They always have a good meal even if the speaker doesn't always measure up!

I'll be back on the water tomorrow...hope to see you tonight.  It starts at 5:30.  Bring a jacket or even a rain coat because it is always cold at this event.

Weather looks promising for the entire week!

I would like to believe that we have seen the last and worst of the cold weather, but that would only be challenging Mother Nature and I know better than that.  The surface temperature vaulted all the way in to the 60's by the end of last week and we enjoyed a great week of fishing.

I finished up my week Friday fishing with Jason Talley and David Laman for the first time and we were blessed with perfect weather.  As a matter of fact, the weather held up through the weekend, but I had already committed it to family time and I don't see too many Saturdays open in the near future.

The warmer weather brought out lots of new fishermen Friday, but we were still able to avoid the crowds and found fish almost everywhere we tried.  While we caught redfish until I got tired of catching redfish, It was all downhill for Dave after the first thirty minutes.  I should add that neither Dave or Jason ever complained about catching too many redfish.

     After quickly catching two normal size reds, Dave fed a fish a Flats Killer XL and his 10 lb. mono got severely tested for at least the next ten minutes. Time and again it threatened to empty his spool while jason and I continued fishing.  I was convinced that it was a big drum until he finally won the tug of war and it rolled up on the surface.  His pot bellied red weighed in at 18 pounds and measured 39.5 inches.  That's a heck of a fish to be plowing around in 2 feet of water, but we have caught at least one 12 to 14 pound red and several 10's off the shallow flats almost every trip.

We are going to make a late afternoon-early evening wade today in search of larger trout, but we'll be back drifting the flats starting tomorrow.  We are still catching very solid trout  when there aren't a lot of boats running across the flats.  As of last night, I now have two days open this week that were canceled due to unseen problems on their end.  The weather for the week looks good!  

Some days you are a really good guide!

Yesterday was pretty darned good, but today was just unreal!  Yesterday we fished until we couldn't take getting blown around any longer, but the bite was one that I would gladly settle for every day of the week. We finished with 23 trout, 3 limits of redfish and 9 flounder.  We had to go through a lot of specks to keep 23 which is not all bad, but we never caught a trout over three pounds.

Today, Brian Palmer, a big game outfitter that specializes in Colorado elk, brought a client of his and as I told him after cleaning the fish, " Don't leave here expecting to do this well on future trips because I just don't have a lot of days like today."  The surface temperature was 58 degrees and we gave up a lot of clarity Tuesday night, but it didn't seem to matter. The water continued to dirty up even more today in a wind that kept the sleeves on my Frogg Toggs popping, but it didn't slow the bite down at all.

                                                     This red was just a little bit too big!

Both Brian and Glen were limited on redfish within the first ten minutes.  It would have been even faster, but Brian caught a 20-inch trout that ate a roach Flats Minnow on his first cast and I held the boat in the wind to see if we had stumbled up on something really good. We caught at least a dozen more slot reds before photographing and releasing a 15-pound fish and abandoning that incredibly easy bite to hunt the trout.

I returned to the same area where we caught all of the smaller trout the day before and we caught specks on Assassin DD's, TTF Flats MInnows, and Corkies non-stop until we got tired of fighting the wind.  I have no idea how many trout we caught, but the amazing thing was that at most we may have caught only 2 trout under 16 inches all day long.  Brian released a beautiful 6-pound plus trout and only one of the 20 trout they kept was under 3-pounds!

I am saving the picture of Brian's big trout for another column, but solid trout like Glenn's were the order of the day! 

I have not had a better day in a long long time.  I have caught larger trout and I have caught some unreal numbers, but not this many quality fish in this kind of wind.  Even with a drift sock we were not getting in many casts per drift and someone still had a fish on most of the time.  The wind is supposed to blow even harder tomorrow if that is possible so I am hoping that it doesn't dirty things up too badly before it settles back down.  It may be a three drift sock day.  

Be careful running East Pass where pipe line crosses!

It didn't take long to find the fish yesterday.  The redfish were hunting fishermen, but the trout were a little more difficult to find...at least the big trout were.  I don't know where all the small trout came from, but they were all over the flats.

We had an extremely low tide early, but the incoming tide roared back in around noon.  By the time we left, the surface temperature was 56 degrees and the catching was easy.  We didn't experiment much with colors or lures as we didn't need to.  Most every fish hit either a Flats Minnow under a Kwik Cork or swimming an Assassin DD on a 1/16 jig head.  The water is in great shape.

I am headed back out right now, but I wanted to get this in for any of you that may be headed out this evening.  Johnny was scouting around as well yesterday and hit something solid where the pipeline crosses East Pass.  He was right in the middle of the channel headed into the lake.  He tried to mark it, but couldn't see it just beneath the surface.

When he pulled up on us and asked me to take a look at his chin it was easy to tell that things could have gone much worse for him.  He had a gash worthy of several stitches and it was still bleeding pretty good.  He cut himself when his face slammed up against the rail over his windshield.  As you would expect his neck was a little sore as well, but the fishing was good enough that he stayed out another 2 hours alternating between cast..dab the blood..reel.. put a fish back..dab the blood..cast...dab...dab again...cast.  Even at 65 he can still take a punch! 

Cold and windy, but no dead fish so far!

The answer to the second most asked question of late is "No!"  No, I cannot ever recall having seen this much water blown out of the bayou in a single night.  It is not a good thing when an egret can wade across the bayou.

    Launching the boat was still not a viable option Monday evening!

I tried to get a photo of the whitecaps behind the bulkhead the evening before, but a 40 mph wind blew my cap into what was left of the bayou and I lost interest.  At least most of the ice had melted.  The answer to the second most asked question is also "No".  We took a brief and miserable tour around much of the good stuff on the north end of the lake and saw no dead fish.  We didn't even find any dead shad or mullet, but some of them could have been stuck in the mud in the backwater ponds.

By Saturday afternoon there were a few hard core local anglers fishing the river (the wind was still blowing, but it was much warmer) and they were back to catching lots of redfish and many of them were over size fish.  Gale force north winds returned Monday and even the most determined folks were again landlocked.  I don't look for the trout to move very far from the safety of deeper water over the next few days and that is a good thing with even more freezing weather forecast for the weekend.

I don't know how many more years I will guide, but I am thinking February will be the month that I possibly join my wife one of her well-deserved vacations in the future. The past two years I have spent more days cussing the ice and canceling trips than fishing.  It makes it even worse when you know the potential for catching the best trout of your life is at hand and you can't even get on the water.

If, after 42 years of marriage, I do finally succumb to an invitaiton to join her on one of her annual jaunts, I hope she picks out a good guide and the water is warm.  Now, I seriously doubt that fishing would be at the top of her agenda, but freezing my butt off in the marsh is still way ahead of a New York play or driving across some bridge in California!   

Perfect conditions Monday, but the rest of the week doesn't look good.

All things considered, we had a very good catching day, but I was disappointed in that I just could not nail the trout down.  The weather was not as ugly as it appears to be in Greg's picture...the guide failed to dry off the lens. Greg and brother, Mark Scott, fished with me and we drew a perfect weather day, probably the last one for a while.  The wind got up late, but you could not have asked for better conditions most of the day.  Once again, we could not get away from the redfish...even on our deep water drifts.

             This was the largest of the many redfish we caught and released! 

I didn't count, but aside from 2 limits of reds, I think I only cleaned 6 or 7 trout, all nice fish from 2 to 4 pounds, but not nearly the numbers I expected to go through.  Once again, we caught all of our trout in 4 to 6 feet of water, but unlike the past three trips they were scattered. We caught them on Die Dappers, Corkies and Red Killers and the best color by far was glow chartreuse.

Mark caught the most and the largest trout when he started fishing the DD and Red Killer under a cork.  I caught 2 trout on a Corky Devil and pulled off a few more, but the trout that hit plastics under the cork were enhaling the bait.  We basically fished two shallow flats to catch all of the redfish we wanted to deal with.  We limited in about as many casts and caught and released reds up to 11 pounds before leaving to hunt the trout.

The water temperature got up to 59 degrees yesterday, but it looks like it could be quite a while before we see that number again.  I cleaned the boat up late last night and rolled it in the garage for the next few days.  It looks like it was a good idea as it is raining sideways and the wind is howling right now!

There is never a good time for a cold front to arrive, but this one could not have come at a worse time.  I have pulled several trips in a row and had some pretty reliable patterns wired.  It is a good feeling leaving the dock knowing the fish are going to be in certain areas at certain times even when you have trouble making them bite.  I learned long ago that clients prefer that you do all of your scouting work in advance!

I canceled the next five days and will not schedule at least two more days as I will have to get back on the water as soon as things thaw out a little and find the fish again.  This seems to happen every year and rescheduling is the reason that it is so hard to book a trip on short notice in the last half of February and most of March.  If we made a good trip during that period last year and you want to do it again give me a call pretty quickly.....if we had a bad trip I will help you find a more competent guide than me, but don't write the fishing on Sabine off!