Colburn's Sabine Connection

It will get better!

There is no doubt that I get far more e-mails when I don't post than when I do.  The bottom line was that I have done far more fishing than catching over the past week or so and I didn't think most of you would be in any hurry to waste gas with the wind howling every day.  Not surprisingly, I picked the two days of the week when the wind was manageable to squeeze in "must do to stay married" chores.

The only two productive things I did from a fishing standpoint was locate some pretty decent redfish and find Keith Daley's new Fish 'N'Hunt store on Hwy. 365 and Jade roaad.  Everywhere is a little out of the way if you live in Orange, but the business is actually no more than 5 minutes west of Central Mall.

They opened two days ahead of schedule and lots of local fishermen somehow got advanced notice.  The front doors were getting a workout while I was there as they were selling "hard to get" lures as fast as they could unpack them. It is a big building with a lot of room dedicated to catering to fishermen and hunters.

"We listen to our customers and If it will catch a fish in fresh or saltwater, I can and will get it for them," said Keith.  Judging solely by what was already available, that was no idle boast.  Eric and Megan answered questions while we toured the aisles and I was unable to come up with a single hard or soft plastic lure that they didn't already have on a shelf or rack.

"We may already be missing a specific color, weight, or size because someone bought all of them, " said Eric, "but we haven't had anyone ask for anything that we don't already have in house so far."  Hunters can also find everything from mud boats to ammo and Terry's will handle all of their rod, reel and troll motor repair.  It is truly a one stop deal.

The doors open from 10 til 8 Tues. thru Thur. and open an hour earlier Fri. and Sat.  They are closed Sunday and Monday.  I know Megan will enjoy sleeping in a little later, but Keith and Eric plan on using that time for a quick duck hunt or daylight fishing trips to the Revetment wall!

We have found a few solid redfish even in all of this wind, but fighting the wind has been a pain in the rear.  If I am not enjoying it I cannot expect clients to enjoy it so I have continued to move trips backhoping for better conditions.  We have been catching decent numbers of smaller redfish in the marsh on high tides, but our larger reds have been deep.

The trout are on the Causeway Reef and chasing shrimp as far north as Green's, but it is tough hanging in there in the wind.  Some of the folks with lighted piers have reported catching decent numbers at night and they have seen a few huge trout cruising under the lights.  We had a poor day on the river yesterday following the rain and hail and I am giving it a rest today.

Depending on the wishes of tomorrow's group, we may or may not fish, but a trip with me over the past week would have been little more than a donation.  I still have a few clients that have fished with me in April, May and June for years that have not yet booked a date and a number of days have already been taken by folks forced to postpone in February and March.

My wife has to remind me about this same time every year that from '71 to '86 I guided on Toledo Bend January through April rather than fight the wind down here.  My logs bear that out, but time becomes more of an issue with age. You can only wait so long!            

    

     

The wind just will not take a break!

By Saturday afternoon I was very much into the "Don't call me..I'll call you" mode after a tough week of fighting the wind.  I spent most of the day cleaning out flower beds so that I could grow more crab grass and a broader assortment of other unwanted weeds.

I had just cleaned up and sat down to watch a little March Madness when my phone ring.  It was the sixth call for help I've gotten already from someone broken down on the lake since January.  They had launched on the south end, but were blowing across the north end when they called.  I loaded up, made the run and all ended well.  As a matter of fact, I wound up towing yet another boat on the way back!

We fished again in the wind yesterday and I mean a wind.  We were forced off the lake early and it was a long rough ride back.  We did, however, salvage the day with some respectable flounder, 3 or 4 trout and several reds that we caught up in the bayous on Flats Minnows and Swim Baits.

The wind beats you up mentally more than it does physically even if you have enough boat to deal with it.  The water is still in great shape, huge incoming tides, and the fish are doing their thing in the open lake, but you just cannot fish them right now.  The first day this wind flattens out it is going to be on and I will be there, but it will continue to be a challenge until that happens.    

Wind continues to alter good game plans!

Regardless of how good or bad February is, every March we bitch about the wind like it never blew this hard before.  Mother Nature really cranked it up another notch this week, but it was far from unfishable.  It just seems worse when you get a pretty good bite going and that particular area is blown out day after day.

I am not ever going to cuss a southeast wind, but we had the misfortune of finding a very good bite on the west side of the lake earlier in the week and have not ben able to get back over there since.  The redfish pretty much abandoned the east shoreline chasing shrimp in the open lake so we have had to go back to working at it again!

When pinned down on the east shoreline, our best bite Monday, Wednesday and Thursday was swimming 5-inch plastics through the scattered grass.  A lot of the reds were small, but the trout that we caught were solid fish up to four pounds. Yesterday was the toughest day of the week for me, but the fish we found were still on that same pattern.

I scouted Monday evening and we found a pretty good group of trout swimming by TTF XL's on a 1/16th ounce head and fishing a pumpkin-chartreuse Crazy Croaker on a fast retrieve in 3 to 4 feet of water on the flats on the north end.    Johnny and I worked a party with Adam yesterday and all totaled we cleaned probably 25 fish.  It was pretty much an even mix of flounder, trout and redfish.  It was a tough grind all day long and I think my group was contemplating mutiny at one point!

Not everyone likes to target flounder all day long, but we are catching at least a few every trip and we are not fishing for them.  There are plenty of good areas, wind or no wind, to check out this bite in earnest and I am going to check it out tomorrow.  The flounder we are catching are good solid fish and there are always at least a few redfish to spice up the game.

If you get a chance to fish this weekend I would go south and hope that the birds show as both the fish and shrimp are down there.  It is the only user-friendly bite going on right now!  

 

Days and nights running together right now!

I cannot believe this week got away from me as fast as it did, but between fishing everyday, hurrying to the Sabine Neches CCA banquet one night and watching non-stop tournament basketball every other night I totally neglected writing any reports.  I apologize, but I just love any sport that decides the true champion by letting them play for it!

Until today we did a lot more fishing than catching.  We did okay, not great, fishing in a 20 mph north wind Thursday.  The next two days the wind blew like hell out of the south and it was a struggle. The biggest question was what the heck happened to the redfish bite.  We covered several miles of shoreline that has just been crawling with reds and they were not there three days in a row.

The good new was while it was slow, we started catching some very nice trout again and some of them were shallow.  Today the wind blew again, but it all got a little bit clearer as to what was going on.  The redfish gave the shallows back to the trout and moved into the open lake feeding on shrimp. 

The gulls were working in the mid-lake and on the south end like it was October and the only thing under them were redfish.  The best news, however, was that for the first time this year, we caught three limits of trout wading in 2 to 4 feet of water before ever checking out the bite under the gulls.  We never caught a fish over 4 pounds, but they were all quality trout and we left them biting!

We found them by swimming glow-chartreuse TTF Big Minnows just under the surface, but we really started catching them when we switched to the smaller  Mirrodine XL and a pink-pearl-chartreuse Crazy Croaker.  It didn't matter what we threw under the birds as long as it was a tail and you let it sink.  Those shrimp just sucked the redfish right off of the shoreline and shallow flats, but they are just as aggressive in the open lake.

I really don't know what to expect tomorrow, but we won't be wading so I may have to shop around.  If the wind doesn't mess up the bite under the gulls that will be money in the bank, but I don't think the trout we found wading will let us drift over them.  Every day is a new day in March as the fish make the transition from mullet to shrimp and deep water to the shallows and it is always a tough month to put together consistent patterns.  

One cast made the day!

We fished yesterday and got lucky, but called one off today.  Tuesday morning the wind was already 15 to 20 when we left the dock at daylight and I had no secret game plan for that.  I ran southeast until we finally found water calm enough to at least keep our balance and shut down.  Clarity was not even a consideration, but the water did look pretty doggone good.

It was just stacked up in the cane and the tide was still coming in which didn't help much either.  For the second trip in a row we were back to catching a lot of rat reds, but not many slot reds.  That seems to all change even on the tougher days if you can fish the evening hours. We were very slowly putting together a respectable catch when I decided to try a stretch of shoreline that was getting pounded, but held a lot of fish last week.

The fish were still there, but without a little luck we would have never known it.  Tired of ducking his lure every time he cast dead into the wind, Max Redmond made our day when he turned around and launched a cast towards the open lake.  A 3-pound trout  immediately ate his stinky pink Sea Shad Shad and we put 16 trout in the box in 20 minutes without moving the boat.  I couldn't tell what was in their stomachs at the cleaning table, but every fish that came on board slung grey crap all over everywhere.  They were definitely on a feeding binge.

I think tomorrow will be a challenge as well.  A northwest wind with 20 mph gusts eliminates most of what I have been fishing.  It should, however, solve the high water problem.  At the worst it should only be a bump in the road as the wind is supposed to swing back around to the SE the following day.  I don't know when we will be able to get back on the west side of the lake, but those fish have not been pressured in weeks!

Reds hid from us a little while!

Everything is back to normal, at leaast as far as the redfish are concerned.  That includes a little more wind than we need.  I was getting down right indignant with the redfish earlier in the week.  Having taken that bite for granted for the past six months, we struggled to even catch rat reds most of the morning.

The folks I talked with were having much the same problem which didn't help any, but there was no obvious reason for the reds to just disappear.  Fortunately, that all changed in the afternoon.  We put four slot reds in the box in the first 5 hours and 5 more in the box in 20 minutes!

 When they turned on they just went nuts, both rat reds and slot fish.  For the first time in a while, shorter tails like the Sea Shad and Flats Minnow worked better than the longer tails.  They also produced more flounder once we figured out what was going on.  We only kept two, but we missed some right at the boat and threw back several smaller fish.  They were really stacked up on the shoreline.

I passed that information on to a good friend as I have had speaking engagements and the Fishing Show to do ever since and he said there were even more flounder on the banks than I thought.  He easily limited the past two days throwing a white Gulp Shrimp.  He said his best fish was in the 3 pound class and that he caught 25 to 30 fish each afternoon.

We have a little weather coming in this weekend, but it shouldn't do much more to the fishing than make it a little uncomfortable. I haven't gotten anything consistent going on with the trout yet, but everything else is good.  I am done with Boat Shows and Fishing Shows and I still have one day open next week if reds and flounder work for you.

I am not sure at this point how long I can suck up the higher gas prices, but I am keeping my rates the same for right now.  If you book something for later in the year now.... I will still honor these rates.