Colburn's Sabine Connection

We worked hard today for a handful of fish!

After getting beat up fishing the lake yesterday, we stayed in the bayous today and literally ground out nine keeper fish.  There was no particularly hot bait for us and no particular pattern as we just fished what we could get to most of the day.  All of our fish, both the flounder and trout, were caught on Flats Minnows and Sea Shads in stinky pink,Texas Roach and chicken on a chain.

For the most part, we still had 4 to 6 inches of visibility on an incoming tide so I assume the lake was about the same.  I don't know or even care what it was in the lake as we couldn't fish it anyway.  I know this report doesn't help much if you plan to fish the weekend, but if I had to fish it would be in the ship channel south of the Causeway.  We didn't do well Thursday, but there was a lot of bait moving on the tide change and we marked a lot of fish on the 8 to 12 foot breaks.  The folks with lighted piers also caught a few trout and reds Thursday night. If you just can't handle fishing in dirty water, however, stay home and mow the grass tomorrow!

Wind is a big problem right now!

Yesterday we made the best of what I just thought was a bad situation until we were greeted with a 20 mph south wind at daylight this morning.  We would have gotten a little beaten up Tuesday running the open lake, but we could have run pretty much anywhere we wanted to fish.  I started in  Black's and Cow bayou while checking 2 or 3 times with two other groups that were fishing everywhere from the jetties to the north revetment wall.

They were not catching any fish at all and said that the water was badly off colored.  There was no need to burn a lot of gas for nothing so we stuck it out and finished with nine flounder and four slot redfish.  We worked our tails off, but it was a pretty decent catch.... all things considered. Today was all but a total waste as the water in the bayous was a little dirtier and the lake was not to be crossed.

We caught three flounder and three redfish before calling it quits before 11 o'clock.  Dirty water always makes it tougher, but the bite on the south end prior to these winds was so strong that I am hoping that it is just a matter of getting down there and figuring it out again.  I will either propose canceling trips or give that option a shot for the next three days.  Running south could prove to be a waste of time and gas as well, but the bite in the bayous is just too darn slow for me right now.

Trout bite continues to improve!

A late season cold front is racing across Sabine Lake at this very moment and, at least for right now, we are getting far more wind than rain.  It doesn't look like rain will be a factor at all tomorrow, but if it blows as hard out of the north as they are predicting, catching fish in the lake will be a challenge!

Lamar with proof that the bayous in the Reserve are a great option when the wind is howling,

Wednesday I very much enjoyed my day scouting with Lamar Belcher.  The water all over the lake just looked terrible, but we still managed to catch fish at most every stop and finished with a very decent catch.  I don't know how often it happens over the course of a year, but our first three fish consisted of a solid flounder, a slot red and a 20-inch trout.  So much for slams.

Because guides cannot work inside the Game Reserve it was only the second time that I have run those canals and backwater this year.  Lamar now knows more about those old haunts and the flounder are still there as well.  The surprise of the day was stumbling up on a school of solid trout hammering away at shrimp under the gulls just south of Willow.

Unfortunately, I had to do the funeral thing Thursday, but I got a great report from a reliable source that they just caught the heck out of trout on topwaters right in the middle of the lake.  They found a couple of gulls chasing shrimp and the bite was on.  They said the water looked terrible with a visibility  of about 4-inches, but they still caught trout in the 3-pound class until they got tired of catching them.  Johnny said the Causeway reef was no bargain for him yesterday, but that the water looked a little better.

Today I fished Allen Knapp's group and we didn't stop running until we got to Green's.  After about an hour of practice casting I decided to sell out on the reef.  As it turned out, we didn't have to go that far as we started hitting small groups of birds just south of Garrisons.  We caught a pile of solid keeper trout on tails and swim baits and a lot of them came well after the birds moved on.  They were chasing ribbon fish and small shrimp.  You could probably have thrown any color, but we went through a lot of chicken on a chain Flats Minnows!

The wind wasn't much of a problem all morning on the south end, but the ride back was pretty bumpy from mid-lake on north.  Until the tide changed, the water was as clear as I have seen it down there in a long time.  I don't know how long they were able to hang in there, but Colt Leger sent me a picture tonight of the only two fish they caught fishing the revetment wall today.  One of the fish was a 22-inch flounder and the other was a 27 1/2 inch trout.  They caught both of them on a white Gulp mullet under a Kwik Cork.  He didn't bother to include his partner's name...possibly because he caught both fish!

If tomorrow's gale doesn't silt the lake up too badly we could be looking at a very good run next week.  If that wind is too tough tomorrow I would highly recommend fishing the canals in the Reserve.

The weekend was pretty much hell to pay!

After sitting out two consecutive days of blistering winds we tried to give it a shot this morning, but the lightning changed our plans.  I drove straight to Beaumont and dropped my boat off at Texas Marine for some maintenance and then spent the day helping Keith, Eric and Aaron finish up their inventory over at Daley's.  They have an incredible amount of tackle in that store and the UPS man delivered more while we were working.

They are already getting ready for their big Fishing Show on June 1 and 2.  Scott  Roland Martin will be there as will Bantam I with Shimano and Chester Moore from Texas Fish & Game.  "Cajun Phil" Broussard and I will also be on hand to talk about the fishing on Big lake and Sabine.  It is going to be a lot of fun!

We fished Friday just ahead of the weekend blow and had a great day on trout.  We released our largest trout, a seven pounder on the Boga, while keeping their three limits that included a lot of 3 to 4 pound fish.  The wind was pretty bad most of the day so we never found any trout chasing ribbon fish, but it didn't matter as we found plenty of good trout suspended in 8 to 10 feet of water.

I have no idea how all of this wind and a pretty big rain today will affect the bite, but I don't look for the fish to move too far any time soon  Mid-lake on south on an incoming tide in the afternoon pretty much sums up the program for us right now.  We did find some 16 to 18 inch trout schooling under the birds early Friday morning in the mouth of Johnson Bayou, but that bite didn't last long.  They were chasing small shrimp.                                                                                                                                                                             

 

There was a price to be paid today!

The catching was about as good as it could possibly get today, but there was a price to paid for being a tad over zealous.  We could have quit an hour earlier and suffered only a bumpy ride home in a stiff southeast wind that blew all day, but we just couldn't say "no more" to catching 3 to 5 pound trout on virtually every cast.  By the time I convinced my group it was time to go, they were already soaking wet and I could barely make out Adam's boat only a couple hundred yards away.

We were already too late at this point!

The penalty for glutony was 27 miles of three foot waves in a driving rain and fog that blanketed the entire lake.  I had forgotten just how hard it is to navigate strictly by GPS and try to guage the distance between the white caps while occasionally opening your eyes just wide enough look for crab traps and gas rigs.

The way back home was somewhere behind Adam's boat.

We eventually made it back and I cleaned three limits of very nice trout, but my fingers are still shriveled up.  We caught a pile of solid trout drifting the shell with 5-inch tails in red shad, chicken on a chain and bug juice, but the bite that got us in trouble was when the trout started hustling ribbon fish on the surface in the downpour.

The trout caught a break, but a pair of flounder got invited to dinner at the Boullions.

Tuesday and Wednesday the weather could not have been more perfect.  I fished with Sherry Boullion and we fished several different patterns as she was more interested in learning than catching.  We did catch as well and left fish biting a couple of times to look at something different.  We caught and released a few trout on the Causeway reef as well as some very nice trout on the revetment wall that hit Swim baits and a TTF Sabine machine Trout Killer.  Before quitting, she kept a pair of nice flounder for supper!

Trout like this one can be addicting.

Wednesday was more of the same and we just hammered the trout until Paul said that he was done around two o'clock.  He and Ward never broke the five pound mark with their trout, but they caught a bunch of 21 to 23-inch fish.  We had only three trout at noon when we ran south to the Blue Buck area and they were limited an hour later.

Ward and Paul finished the day with a limit of solid specks.

The water clarity gets better everyday and the bite has moved a little further south every day.  The numbers haven't been there, but the size has made up for it.  This week alone we have caught at least one "very good" trout off the revetment wall, the Neches flat, the grass south of Johnson's and the reef. I haven't had time to fish for flounder, but they are doing their thing and the redfish bite has been lights out on the jetties.

It looks like Saturday could get blown out, but my group today has dried out and we are going to give it a shot again tomorrow.  I would be more than happy if the catching is even half as good as it was today and hopefully we will know when to call it a day!

I am still here....sometimes!

"Let the games begin!" The Monday morning following Easter weekend traditionally kicks off the busiest time of the year for me.  I have enjoyed a very steady March, but weather permitting, I will have few days off between now and Christmas and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Mother Nature was overly kind to the Easter weekend fishermen and it was pretty much a case of the "haves" and the "have-nots" as far as the catching was concerned.  I waited the bite out Wednesday with Trey Allison and his sons and the fish finally turned on for us around one o'clock.  We caught every trout in a two hour period after going fishless the first four hours.

We caught our trout in 12 to 14 feet of water on limetreuse and red shad plastics, but there was also a decent redfish bite taking place on the shoreline as long as the menhaden were on the move.  I crappie fished half a day Thursday and was going to give the Lake a rest until Monday, but the beautiful weather and an invite to beat up on the flounder was too much to pass up Friday evening.

Because guides cannot fish the Game Reserve with clients, I very seldom fish the canals and back lakes  that I made a living in until the late 90's.  John Caroll was gracious enough to share something new, but he really wanted me to show him a marsh ditch that we used to fish and he also needed ten flounder for a family get together on Sunday.

We had his ten flounder in less than thirty-minutes and they were very solid fish up to 20-inches.  We only fished two of his spots and were using a lure that I had never tried.  John takes a Mr. Blitz Tic-N-Spin which is basically a keel weighted 4/0 hook with a small gold Willow leaf blade attached at the sproat of the hook.  It comes packaged with an additional double hook, but he leaves that off.  He then rigs a GULP mullet weedless and just bounces it off the bottom on a slow retrieve.

He caught 8 of the 10 keepers before I gave up on fishing the same Gulp mullet on a 1/4 ounce jig head.  I have no doubt that the blade made the difference just as it does when fishing the Road Runner head.  We both used one after I showed him the ditch which had silted in some following two hurricanes and we never caught the first flounder, but we did catch slot reds until we got tired of catching them!

Because they were tearing up the Gulp so quickly, we replaced it with a Blurp Sea Shad.  I think we were using a 3/16ths or 1/4 ounce lure and a 1/8th would have worked even better.  We obviously weren't the only ones aware of the flounder bite in the Reserve as there was a lot of traffic in both Three Bayous and Willow.

There was apparently a lot of traffic on the lake Saturday and Sunday, but there were still some big trout caught and some trout taken under the birds as well.  We have been catching at least one or two trout in the 25 and over class almost every outing and we haven't even been able to fish several areas that are usually strong this time of the year.  Dirty water has been a problem on the extreme north end, but more often than not it has been the wind that dictates where we fish.

I appreciate the fact that so many of you check this report on a regulart basis and I apologize for unintenionally neglecting it the past few days. Your responses and reports on your trips are also appreciated!