Colburn's Sabine Connection

The cold hasn't slowed down the redfish...yet!

It was cold and a north wind was doing its thing when I walked out of church this morning, but what's new?  Thursday morning there was barely enough water to launch the boat, ice all over the deck and the wind was starting to blow when we left the landing.  in spite of all of that, I caught a big slot red on the first cast with a River 2 Sea crankbait and the fish never slowed down all morning long.  Julian and Scott caught most of their fish on H & H swim baits and Gulp Mullet.

Julian nets another nice red on a very cold morning!

It finally started warming up as predicted, but the wind increased as did the cloud cover and eventually the rain came as well.  It still beat the cold and while it was supposed to rain even more on Friday, we were promised warmer weather to boot.  It warmed up some, but it also absolutely poured most of the morning.  Russell Harrison and his son and daughter fished with me and in spite of totally different conditions, the bite was a carbon copy of the previous morning.

I have no idea how many reds they caught in a driving rain, but it was a bunch.  For the first couple of hours we fished an incoming tide, but it didn't matter which way it was running as far as the reds were concerned.  We caught about a 20 minute lull in the rain before the wind switched to the north and blew like a hurricane.

Leslie was wetter and colder than her oversized red!

Leslie's poncho offered little protection and she was already soaked by the time I found two rain jackets buried in a towel bag. She warmed up just enough to catch a few more reds and we called it a day before she froze to death.  Fish or no fish I would have cried "Uncle" early on, but she never said a word!

We also found a big school of small trout suspended in the river before quitting, but we didn't stay with them long.  They were right on the bottom and they were all over Swim baits.  At least two more big trout were caught on Corkies on the La. shoreline Thursday morning.  The largest was a 9.02 pound fish Derek Leger caught on a glow chartreuse floating Fat Boy. He said his hands were so cold he could barely reel and that he never felt the fish bite.  He released it and two more trout in the four pound class.  He caught his fish over scattered shell in 5 feet of water.      

It was still good yesterday!

At 6:00 this morning I was disappointed that I had canceled today's trip based on a scary wind report.  Two hours later I was making gumbo and pleased that we had rescheduled.  The wind was really blowing by the time we quit yesterday, but nothing like today and tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same out of a different direction.

Lamar and Lenzi Belcher were supposed to fish with me yesterday, but Lenzi had some business stuff come up at the very  last minute and Lamar showed up alone.  The wind wasn't bad at all early and we worked some pretty serious flocks of gulls until mid-morning.  Both trout and reds were working under them and we caught our fish on Swim Baits, Assassins and Trout Killers.

We had a pretty good box of fish by the time the wind drove us back into more protected water and we ended up doing even better in the ICW and Black"s.  We caught several more redfish on a River 2 Sea Biggie crankbait and some very nice trout on an H & H Swim bait and a glow-chartreuse Split Tail Mullet.  We had just enough tide to keep the deep fish active and we never had much of a lull in the action all day.

I talked with a friend last night that quit at noon yesterday and caught only six trout all morning on a white floating Corky Fat Boy, but one of them was a 28 1/2 inch fish.  He wasn't putting a nail in the Fat Boy for a controlled sink. He was just fishing it right out of the package.  He said he was drifting in 4 feet of water north of Pleasure Island and the fish would hit almost as soon as the lure hit the water or not at all.  We had an outgoing tide all morning and the water temperature was 59 degrees.

He said he never saw or felt a strike in the choppy water.  His line would just tighten up and it was game on!

We are rescheduling Thursday as well so I will probably just ride out the next couple of days, watch football and finish spending money on Christmas. We are going to wade a flat I haven't fished in a while Sunday evening if the water temperature holds up.  Hopefully the big trout are already slipping up in there in the evenings. I love that deep bite on the Maniac Mullet, but a good shallow water Corky bite right at dark is addicting!     

Had to work a little harder for some very nice fish!

We got an early start Friday and fished an outgoing tide and overcast skies all day.  We also had a much harder east-northeast wind than forecasted, but what's new.  It was not an easy day (it seldom is when you have to fish deep structure) but we called it a day around 2:00 with three reds, three flounder and one fish shy of a limit of trout.

Some nice flounder were hanging out deep with the trout as well.

With the exception of a couple of trout caught on Split Tail Mullets, everything we caught ate a 3 or 4 inch shad colored Usual Suspect Swim Bait.  We checked out two flocks of gulls early, but the fish under them were small.  The trout we kept were all in the 18 to 22 inch class it has been that way this entire week. 

I thought it was going to rain and the wind was going to blow all day today or I would not have postponed today's trip.  It might have been best anyway as Carlin was going to bring his 10 year old twins and while it has been good, it has not been a user-friendly bite.

We just can't fish every pattern in a given day, but had the wind not blown so hard yesterday I would have been right back on the flats behind the islands fishing Corkies, Maniac Mullets and swimming 5-inch tails.  There are some very good trout holding in 3 to 5 feet of water and you don't need the birds to find them.  When you do catch that first trout drifting, either plant your anchor immediately or start a wade if the water is shallow enough and the bottom isn't too soft.

Not surprisingly, I just got a call while filing this report and the birds did work long enough for some folks to limit this morning. I would not have been fishing where they were ao I would have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it may have been happening everywhere....don't know why I ever listen to weather forecasts!

 

Cold hasn't hurt the bite so far.

We blew off checking out some of the spots where we have been catching our better deep water trout, but still had a very good afternoon with both the trout and the redfish.  By the time we got on the water the birds that had been working a little in the morning were done, but the fish were still holding on the same flats in 3 to 4 feet of water.

Both the reds and the trout ate Usual Suspect Swim Baits and DieDappers for us.  We talked with some folks that had limited on reds and specks this morning with TTF Trout Killers fishing the same type water.  That first boat ride had to be a cold one!

We still had an outgoing tide at noon and the water was low, but it slowed down by mid-afternoon.  I was a little surprised by the amount of bait that we found on the surface and the fish were scattered, but right there with all of that bait.  I really wanted to fish our big trout bite in the  ICW, but there was a lot of boat traffic for a Thursday and live bait fishermen were anchored on or near two or three very good spots.

We never found the redfish schooling, but we did see a few pushing shad and mullet up against the exposed mud well off the shoreline.  I dreaded this cold front, but after three very good days in a row I now hate to see it warm back up.  Its more of a bird in the hand thing than the conditions changing the bite that much that quickly.

I had 2 calls on my answering machine this week from folks just wanting to know what was going on and neither of the numbers that they left worked.  They said they were coming down this weekend and just wanted a place to start.  If you were one of them feel free to try again, but I need a workable number!

You had to be there and no one else was!

We are going to get a late start today due to football playoff travels last night and I am a little concerned that the bad weather will arrive before my clients do.  For the third trip in a row we are totally switching gears as far as the approach and I hope it works out as well!

I have not had a trip as enjoyable as Thursday's trip in a long time.  I had the green light to ignore what had been a very good numbers bite with the trout and I decided to check out deep water big trout spots exclusively.  It was cold and drizzling when we started, but we picked up four nice trout in fifteen feet of water at the first stop.

The next three stops yielded only one more solid fish and I decided to leave the ICW and run a bunch of holes I haven't checked in a while further up river.  For some unknown reason, however, before leaving I felt a need to make a quick run out in the lake first just to see if the redfish were still in the area where we found them a few days before.

It took maybe fifteen minutes to put together this six fish limit.

The crazy thing about that decision was that we had seen no gulls all morning long and I knew that if there were no gulls in that area it would be like hunting a needle in a hay stack and little more than wasted time and gas.  We did not see the first gull until we reached that area and even then there were only a couple circling  well overhead.

Two more go back to join their pals!

We made a few fan casts while waiting and pulled off one red on a TTf Trout Killer and boated another on a Usual Suspect Swim Bait. Fifty yards away three more birds just materialized and we eased that way.  Before we could make our first cast several reds surfaced and we were on again.  For the next two hours it was controlled chaos.

I say that because we saw only one other boat all day long and each new school of redfish would seemingly wait to surface until we had finished with the group we were on.  It took about ten minutes to limit and I spent more time putting reds back two at a time than catching the rest of the day.

It secon round nirvana began like this and progressd to.....

About 11:30, we couldn't believe how long we had been there either, the bite just stopped and we could have cared less.  We peeled off the rain gear and while we ate a snack and drank a coke the sun broke through.  Before I could point the boat back north the controlled chaos suddenly gave way to redfish nirvana!

this.  How can you drive off and leave something like this!

In every direction you looked the redfish were on the surface and every gull on Sabine Lake had joined the free-for-all.  Even after catching redfish non-stop for over three hours we couldn't leave.  It was almost like it would have been sinning against Mother Nature as she doesn't afford these opportunities very often.

Bottom line is that we stayed and caught redfish until we were too worn out to fight them any longer and never made it back to the trout plan.  We had to drive through schooling redfish to go home!

Yesterday I got a "Hey....buddy" call from clients that were fishing on their own and needed another pair of waders that didn't leak.  I wasn't on the water, but I drove over to the Cow Bayou launch and brought them another pair and a handful of slow sinking Maniac Mullets.  They had 12 or 13 two to four pound trout in the box and had released three more over 25-inches that morning.

They said they caught all of their fish in three feet of water on the Louisiana side of the lake on a red-chartreuse Top Dog, Jr. and several different colors in the Maniac Mullet.  I have no idea where they were fishing as I didn't ask and they didn't volunteer any added information, but I know a few areas worthy of wading this evening.

It is supposed to get cold and nasty over the next few days so unfortunately all of this will change at least a little.  The best news is not the redfish, but the fact that we are seeing more big trout both in shallow water and hanging on the deep breaks.  One thing is for sure, I will not detour through the middle of the lake just to check on the reds this afternoon!

 

Fewer birds, but larger trout!

I haven't posted in a while, but it hasn't been because we haven't been catching.  My wife had to go on a business trip and any glitch with the computer dry docks my reports until she returns.  We had to fish a little harder than usual all last week, but that is preferable to chasing gulls around.  Even when we found the gulls working the fish were holding deep.

I dogged off the flounder fishing early last week and it took a little while to figure out the trout.  The redfish were still schooling up in the open lake, but we had to fish for our specks.  Even when fishing a tail under the gulls we had to slow it down and take advantage of a strong outgoing tide all the way through Saturday. 

I fished a big group with Johnny Friday and Saturday and we caught some really solid trout.  Neither of us had to fish the same area or the same baits and we were still able to catch a lot of fish.  Johnny took a tour in the open lake both days to easily fill his redfish limits, but we were able to still catch a few in the ICW fishing tails and Gulp.

Because the tide was running out so hard we switched to longer tails like the Assassin Texas Shad and TTF Trout Killer rigged on 3/8ths ounce heads to catch most of our larger trout.  There is no doubt that the big trout are starting to transition from shrimp to finfish as almost every fish we cleaned over three pounds had mullet or big shad in their stomachs.

Lots of fun, but just too darned big!

For the first time this year, nearly every red we hooked in the mid-lake area was over sized.  Johnny fished a little further south each day and had no problem limiting on slot fish using Hoginars and tails.  We are getting ever closer to finding better numbers of really big trout on the shallow flats. It is time to break out the Corkies and Maniac Mullets because we are probably only one more cold front away from a steady diet of chasing our biggest trout of the year!