Colburn's Sabine Connection

Pre-front catching was almost too good!

Wednesday morning I put my Thanksgiving honey-do's on hold and loaded up Andrew and one of his cousins, Jordan, after looking at the weather forecast.  The weather was even better than advertised, but I could not believe how many boats were on the water.

The trout bite was slow, but Andrew made the schooling redfish pay!

We worked hard to catch our trout for some reason, but eventually saved the trip with two schools of redfish that suddenly surfaced in casting range.  The boys were content to help me hunt big trout early (we caught one) with the promise that we would wear the smaller trout out under the birds later.  It did not happen and I was disappointed.

Friday morning, Howard Watson and his nephew, Tee Beau, fished with me ahead of the slow moving front. We started out in the ICW and it proved to be a good move. By the time we decided to run to the lake we had seven good trout (2 very nice fish) and a huge flounder that Howard tricked with an H & H Usual Suspect Swim bait.

Howard's personal best flounder inhaled his Usual Suspect Swim bait.

We had just boated 2 big trout when he said he had a good fish as well, but it was sure acting lethargic.  I imediately reached for the net suspecting that he had a flounder, but not one that size.  When we ran to the lake around nine it was dead calm and the gulls were everywhere.  You know it is going on when there are at least 25 boats that you can almost cast to and none of them are bothering to chase birds!

We quickly finished their limits with TTF Trout Killers, Assassin Texas Shad and a Maniac Mullet.  It was virtually every cast when Howard opted to get an early start back to Houston and we abandoned the crazy good bite.  It was cloudy and getting darker by the time I cleaned and bagged the fish, but I decided to call and see if Jordan and his older brother, Connor, wanted to make a quick run to make up for the slower Wednesday trip.

Their Dad had them there in record time and while the birds had slowed down, the bite was still going on.  We may have gotten in an hour at best before the wind picked up and the bottom dropped out.  Not one of them had any rain gear, but they were in no hurry to leave. Had the redfish not been doing their thing as well as the trout, I believe they would have yielded to their uncontrollable shaking.

Prior to the arrival of the rain, it was about as good as I have seen it in the lake as far as numbers of keeper trout versus throwbacks.  Even when there were no birds anywhere close you could simply fan cast and continue catching fish after fish.

From what we have seen the past couple of trips the reds are starting to school up again in the open lake.  We were catching them mixed in with the trout, but we are now running into schools of nothing but redfish.  It is just crazy right now.  Everything from big trout to big flounder are doing their thing in water from 3 to 17 feet deep.  The only draw back is that you can't fish every pattern at the same time!   

Too many choices...too little time!

I fished with Dr. Fred and his son, Keith, yesterday and the catching pretty much matched the perfect weather.  Keith blew us away on the flounder catching and Dr. Fred was on a roll with the redfish, but we finished the morning with some very nice trout as well.

The flounder bite is happening all the way from the river to the jetties!

We caught our trout and reds on several different baits both under the birds and as deep as 18 feet, but Keith caught the flounder with a pumpkin-chartreuse Sea Shad.  It was non-stop catching until the out going tide ground to a halt and we didn't fight it long after that.  Dr. Fred has started using a spinning combo a little more of late and he has been on his game the last couple of trips!

Dr. Fred put it on the reds with his spinning rod and an east beast Flats Minnow.

I don't know that the catching can get much better than it is right now and much of that is due to the perfect weather.  We can fish any pattern we want to fish and the flounder, reds and trout are all doing their thing.  I think we are going to switch gears tomorrow and just hunt big trout which can be a hard program to stick with when there is an easier bite to be had.  Some very nice trout in the 5 to 7 pound class have started showing up on the shallow flats and I think the numbers may be better than we think!

You don't know if you don't go!

 

The boat is too fast for me.....but the flounder bite was just right!

It took Keith Daley about five minutes to talk me into taking a ride in his new bay boat (it is not my idea of a bay boat) and checking out a flounder hole or two on the ship channel Saturday evening.  His boat is indeed a center console, but way too low slung and much too fast for an old guide use to riding around at 35 mph.  He is going to get it wrapped in the very near future, but who can read the decals when it goes past them at 92 mph!

We did get it slowed down long enough to anchor on a shallow flat and while I have had better days around the Cameron Ferry, the flounder bite Saturday was hard to beat.  We caught and released just a bunch of 16 to 18 inch fish while keeping four flat fish from 3 to 5 1/2 pounds.  Almost all of them ate a pink or chartreuse Gulp Mullet.

That is a 6-inch Gulp Mullet hanging out of the mouth of Keith's 24 inch 5 1/2 pound flattie!

Daley's has been going through cases of Gulp over the past month and I assumed that most of it was going across the Causeway to the bite in Cameron, but I was wrong again.  The only thing keeping a lot more folks out of the Neches ship Channel is that they can only keep two fish this month.  It isn't because the flounder aren't there and they know it.

The best bite is apparently at the 5 to 6 foot mark as the bank fishermen and waders are casting out to that depth and the boaters are casting into that depth.  The tide obviously makes a huge difference, but the flounder bite like they are passing through in waves.  Its 20 minutes of nothing and then 20 minutes of a bite every cast.  It was fun and I may do it again before the run is over, but our trout and redfish bite hasn't slowed down in the ICW and lake and that's what most of my clients want to do.

As good as it gets around here!

I don't know why it would have been any different today than the past two days, but I wasn't there to find out.  I haven't had a better day in a long time than I enjoyed Wednesday and Thursday was darn near as good.  After hitting several spots on the ICW just checking out the bite for the group coming in the next day, I put my Talon down in two feet of water just before noon and never moved for the better part of the next hour and a half.

A huge school of redfish moved up on the shallow flat and I caught and released reds up to 32-inches long cast after cast.  I caught the first 10 or 15 on Swim baits, but by the time I left I had caught them on everything from a Top Dog Jr, to a roach TTF red killer.  I never caught the first trout on the flat, but I did keep two really nice flounder that hit the red killer.

I could have limited time and again on 16 to 18 inch trout in the ICW that morning and also caught two "really" nice trout bumping the bottom in 15 feet of water.  It was the best bite I had been on in a while and I figured it would tank before Joe Matthews and Robert and John Beson could get there the next day.

Joe fooled this solid red with a Split tail Mullet.

Fortunately, I was wrong and while it was colder than the day before, the fish may have been even more active.  We finished with a good mess of redfish as well, but the tide was out so far that we could not reach the same redfish I found the day before.  We could see them and coaxed a couple into hitting topwaters at the end of a long cast into the wind, but it was frustrating.

Robert caught this nice deep water trout early.

Robert caught another nice trout off the deep bite early, but for the most part we stuck with tails and caught trout all day long in the ICW.  The ratio of keeper size fish to throwbacks wasn't bad if you were willing to bale out on the small fish and hunt more.  Chicken on a chain or East Beast, depending on whether we were throwing Assassins or Flats Minnows and glow chartreuse in a Split Tail Mullet were our most productive colors.

Both of the big trout I turned loose the day before hit a pink-pearl Maniac Mullet.  The flounder bite on the ship channel south of the Causeway continues to be lights out.  I talked with clients tonight that kept four fish Wednesday evening that weighed 21 pounds and four fish this evening that wieghed 17 pounds.....not a bad average!

Big trout starting to do their thing!

I am still catching more redfish and flounder on crank baits and Swim Baits than tails, but it have could more to do with the fact that I have fished the ICW and the river more than the lake.  Johnnny fished Rod Anthony and his daughter, Emily, for me last week and he just sent me a good picture of Emily's first and largest redfish ever.  Nothing like covering all of your bases with one fish.  They limited on reds, but that was the one that really counted!

Emily Anthony's first red was 29 inches long and weighed 9 pounds!

It is still just a little early, but we are really close to seeing some big trout caught in the ICW.  I "scratched the wall" just a little while last weekend and caught 2 nice trout and missed another very good fish.  I know I had several clients back in the spring that wanted to give it a try once it started so it is time to at least get on the calendar.  I forget my own cell phone number so remembering those names is unthinkable!

It is basically a Maniac Mullet/ Corky Devil bite in deep water and while it is a little slow at times, the big fish are stacked when you find them! 

Good crankbait bite.

The wind was hell yesterday, but it did force me to more seriously fish some stuff that I haven't looked at in a while.  I tied on a crank bait and threw nothing else all morning.  I only caught a couple of trout, both of them very nice fish in the 4 to 5 pound class, but I had a good time with the reds.

The best action took place during the outgoing tide.  The fish were holding in about four feet of water and would just crush the lure when you jerked it free from the outside of the grass line.  I tried a few different colors, but anything in  a shad or bream pattern seemed to work the best.  I was fishing a River 2 Sea Cranky M which runs about 3 to 5 feet deep.

Both trout ate the shad pattern and I missed one "WOW" flounder that I literally drug up along side of the boat thinking that I was pulling up an underwater snag.  I was shocked to look down and see nothing but a blanket of brown and a huge mouth full of teeth.  I wouldn't have kept the fish, but I would have liked to have weighed her as she was easily over the six pound mark and it has been a while since I caught a sure enough big flounder.  They like crankbaits, too!

Johnny somehow managed to stay in the open lake all morning and the last time I talked with him he had 10 trout and 2 limits of reds.  It was a quick call and I didn't ask if he found birds or what.  It looks like more wind today.

Appreciate the concern!

I've still got one more "day surgery" to endure next week, but things appear to finally be headed in the right direction.  Things went a little south immediately following last week's surgery, but I am back in the boat!

Johnny pulled my groups for me the last few days and they had good trips even when the wind blew.  I can assure you that you are not backing up when you have an opportunity to fish with Johnny!  He came by this morning and said that in spite of better conditions Wednesday that the catching was a little better on Tuesday.  They spent most of the day in the lake hounding the birds and nobody does it better than he does.

He said the strangest thing about the two days was that the better trout were not in the same area both days.  They actually spent more time south than they had in a while and finally found the better trout on that end of the lake.

I did get another good report off the north revetment wall from the flounder fishermen.  I don't know if they were fishing the pipes or the lake side of the rocks, but six fishermen had their two fish limits of flounder up to 5 pounds in the first thirty minutes.  Robin said they caught every fish on pink Gulp mullet.  They wouldn't bite pink when white and pink were the only colors you could find!