Colburn's Sabine Connection

This wind is the pits!

This wind will not give us a break even before daylight or after dark.  We have forced the issue a time or two in the past couple of weeks and it proved to be a bad idea just as suspected. I continue to reschedule trips day after day as I could catch darn nearr as many fish in the parking lot right now. Even more frustrating is scouting on the days without clients when I know I am just burning gas!

We made one of those trips yesterday, but at least caught enough fish to fry up that night.  We kept four nice flounder, five or six trout and a slot red and we fished hard.  For the most part the water does not look bad in the areas we were able to fish.  The water in Black's looked surprisingly bad, but most of the water on the south end of the lake was in good shape.

Unless something drastic changes over night I think your best bet for the weekend is the ship channel and the semi-protected side of the jetties.  It does me no good to even check out the bayous in the Game Reserve, but they should be a good option as well.  Between the strong incoming tide and howling south wind much of the grass along the shoreline was flooded.

Good luck if you just have to go!

 

It's gonna be crowded this weekend!!

I finished up my week a day early due to the funeral of an old friend, but we still caught some solid trout through Thursday in spite of a brutal south wind that blows all day every day.  Johnny and I fished a group of six that I help him with a number of times each year.  Wayne, Jerry, Mark and Tom invited Hal and Paul to join them, Toby chose Baffin over fishing with us this time, and while we caught some very nice trout it was anything but an easy bite.

Jerry with a solid trout caught on an Assassin...

I think everyone in the group caught at least one trout in the five pound class with Paul catching and releasing the best fish, a trout just a tad over the seven pound mark that ate a 4-inch Swim bait.  Tom also caught a very nice trout that I will probably save the picture of for this month's TSFM column.  Johnny, as usual, stuck with a topwater and caught several good trout while the rest of us got it done with four inch Usual Suspects in space guppy and pearl white or pearl-chartreuse five inch Assassins.

Hal figured it out quickly as well...

Paul's big trout was his first speck ever as he is an east Texas bass fishermen and Hal was new to it as well as he wasn't sure what he had even caught, but he was ready to do it again.  The size of the average fish made the trip as numbers were hard to come by both days, but the core of the group has been there and done that over the years making it easier to hang in there and grind in the wind.

One of several nice trout Wayne caught during one shot under the birds.

The highlight the second day was the very sporadic bird action that provided a brief, but crazy good bite.  Johnny's bunch hit a small group right at day light and caught three trout over six pounds out of the small school before they disappeared for the rest of the day.  We were finishing up at the end of the day and ran into a small group and caught five trout in the 4 to 5 pound class before they disappeared just as quickly.  The trout were all throwing up shrimp about an inch long!

Every launch I drove by after the funeral yesterday was packed so I will do baseball and family stuff the remainder of the weekend.  I hope that you have a great weekend and that this wind will finally give it up for you.  This is going to be a heck of a summer on Sabine!

 

Wind is just wrecking a very good bite!

Well, we managed to get in three days this week.  One very good one, one frustrating one, and one that we made work better than I undoubtedly deserved.  The wind has just been relentless and it looks like more of the same for the weekend.

Johnny and Rob fished with me the best day of the three and we caught trout on everything from Corkies to VuDu shrimp.  The water was getting dirtier by the day due to the runoff, but the trout were still holding on the shallow flats.  Johnny caught our largest trout, a fish that would push five pounds, but all of the fish we kept were very solid fish.

Rob prevented Johnny from landing an even bigger trout according to Johnny, but while Rob was admittedly a tad slow to even pick up the net the net, I saw no intentional foul play.  Every fish is contested with these two and it makes for an entertaining day. As you would expect, Johnny caught every one of his trout on a Swim Bait.  Rob and I stuck with a 5-inch Assassin and TTF Big Minn0 in dark colors when I wasn't fishing the Corky and they ate them just as well.

We finshed the morning hustling small groups of birds and cuaght and released a lot of solid trout witn the VuDu shrimp in Nautral and glow chartreuse colors.  Johnny caught a few more on his Swim Bait as well.

We caught a lot of those fish in a stiff wind so I felt pretty confident about the rest of the week until Mother Nature kicked it up a notch.  The following day we just hammered them on the very first drift only to get blown out before we could even go back for another pass.  The water clarity was even poorer, but the fish were still there.  Two days later the birds worked in the ICW which was no minor mirracle, and while the trout were smaller they were keepers.

It looks like you are going to have to deal with more wind over the weekend if you just have to fish, but I am going to give it a break.  I have gotten three great reports on redfish from folks fishing the protected side of the jetties this week and that may be the only game in town if you hope to beat the wind.

Runoff hasn't hurt lake yet!

Area shift workers that frequent this report out of boredom even more so than looking for infomation are already well aware of the incredible amount of rain that fell on us in a single night.  As a rule it takes a few days for the lake to get really screwed up for a short while, but hopefully that won't be the case this time.

The water still looked pretty good Sunday evening and the trout were still biting on the north end of the lake.  There is a strong current in the ditiches and bayous as low lying areas continue to drain, but our salinity level was out the roof prior to the monsoon.

We have been seeing porpoises in Cow bayou and Brad Deslatte said that he and the family watched a bull shark scatter fish in the north end of Bessie Heights Sunday evening.  That is not very comforting news for waders.  The better bite was still in 4 to 5 feet of water and while some nice trout were taken on topwaters in shallower water the better numbers were holding deeper.

A four inch fire tiger Usual Suspect and any dark bodied five inch plastic, as long as the tail was chartreuse, did most of the damage.  If the fantastic bite we have been enjoying does slow down for a few days check the deeper water in the ICW or the Causeway reef.  I was looking back at past logs and four of the last six times the reef lit off was immediately following a late spring flood!

Just what we didn't need!

When the phone rang at 3:45 this morning I baled out of bed afraid that I had over slept which I have never done to date, but there is always a first time.  Before I was sure that I wasn't dreaming, must less where the phone was, it quit ringing and my cell phone lit up on the desk.  "Hey there Captain, we are going to be a little late...we are still at the casino and Daryl finally hit a hot streak and has gotten a little bit of our money back!"

"You've got to be kidding"...at least that's kind of what I was thinking.  I made a pot of coffee and showered as there was no way I was going to get one more hour of sleep.  At 4:30 I got phone call number two.  "Hey Captain,we just walked outside and you were right when we talked last night...this weather is too bad to fish...let's do it another day."  I had called them the night before and all but pleaded with them to postpone, but they would have none of it at the time.

They may or may not still be gambling, but it is still raining harder than predicted and this monsoon will be a game changer by the middle of next week.  I am not saying that it will kill the bite, but it will change things.  We have really been on a roll and the mini-flood couldn't have come at a worse time for me.  It is very seldom that I get any program so wired that I could care less about the wind!

One of several nice trout caught and released with Sherwin Williams group.

David and his Sherwin Williams crew fished with me Tuesday and we found the trout in 3 feet of water and in 18 feet of water and we didn't keep limits, but we caught some super fish.  We caught every trout on a VuDu Shrimp under a cork or a Usual Suspect Swim Bait.  The Swim Bait was good at both depths.

Danny Evans released his personal best trout.

Wednesday morning we got a late start and the fish were doing it when we got there.  The wind blew us off one flat, but we caught fish on the same two baits drifting Sidney, Stewts and fishing points on the ICW.  Danny Evans caught a personal best and we turned loose even bigger fish before the morning was over.

Gwyn wasn't putting her big trout back with only two fish in the box at the time.

The wind was already howling at daylight when Phil, Mark and Gwyn showed up and by the time we reached the lake it was misting rain and black as the inside of a cow.  After zeroing in the same spots that had been so good all week, we ran further south and found the trout just going nuts in 5 feet of water between the white caps.  Gwyn kept a big trout early on that we normally release, but we weren't sure at that point that we were going to even catch enough fish for their anticipated fish fry.

We left the area with 21 trout only to find more fish under the birds.  It never fails...had we been sitting on a zero we would have never seen the first bird.  We also added three flounder, two huge croaker and a slot red to the catch before calling it a day.  Unlike the previous two days, we caught all of our fish on five inch roach or chicken on a chain Assassins riggedd on 1/8th ounce heads.  We also had a really good tide change that we didn't get most of the week.

They are probably back at the jetties after this deluge, but two days in a row the porposises moved in on us up on the north end and shut down the catching until they left.  I am sure that things will change at least a little, but we were finding the trout and reds under terns with no gulls around so don't pass them up without a cast or two.

As good as we have been doing, some good friends have been out every day as well and have done just as well if not better.  I saw only one of them yesterday, but he and his guests limited early.  Our largest trout this week was an 8.2 fish, but we released a substantial number of 6 to 7 trout on all but one day.  Most of the 20 to 24 inch fish we cleaned were full of eggs so I am assuming the bigger fish we released were also.  Those 5-pound plus trout have a head start to reaching the 10 pound mark and you know they are passing along some good genes.

 

What a week!

This report is a little longer than usual, but we have been on a great run, I just finished cleaning the boat and I am taking the first day off in a while!

It was still raining a little when I unhooked the charger yesterday morning, but the radar showed only small scattered showers over the next hour or so.  When I met Jerry Pugh and Jerry Pugh, Jr. at the launch it wasn't even drizzling.

It was a dark and nasty when Jerry Sr. stuck our first solid trout!

By the time we reached the river, however, it was sprinkling again and we stopped to put on our Frogg Toggs.  By the time we reached Middle Pass we could barely see the front of the boat!

With just enough sun peeking through to indicate that it was really day time we discovered that we were completely wrapped up in black ominous skies....there was no good direction to run and it was raining too hard to run anyway.  Since lightning wasn't a part of the perfect storm we elected to fish the small flat north of the island until it passed or the boat sunk as the bilge pump was having hell keeping up.

Jerry, Jr. was soaked but pleased after catching and releasing this nice trout.

For the next 30 to 40 minutes the fishing was as good as I have ever experienced.  Virtually every cast with a She Dog or Swim Bait was inhaled by a trout between 3 and 7 pounds.  While the Pughs enjoyed the unexpected bonanza, I spent most of my time chasing their trout around the floor of the boat as the water was just deep enough for them to swim out of reach.  In between catching and releasing and still keeping quick limits, I managed to shield the camera lens and get a few pictures.  It was just crazy good!

An hour later there wasn't a cloud in the sky and we were hunting the sun screen.  We continued to catch trout up to four pounds in a number of other spots the remainder of the day, but nothing could match that incredible start.

Lee celebrated his birthday by catching and releasing this nice trout.

Tuesday was more of the same in much better weather.  Kelly Ford sprung for a guide trip for his Dad, Lee's, birthday and Lee made it an even more special day with a personal best 7 pound plus speck that he released.  Once again we just had a heck of a day and Kelly kept his run of big flounder catching in tact with a good fish that inhaled his Swim Bait.  I don't know that Kelly has ever fished with me that he hasn't caught a big flounder.  Uncle Mike had to stay home and tend the business, but he was calling on the hour.

Kelly kept his string alive with this big flounder.

I found those same fish Monday fishing with Curt and Jennifer Joslin and they haven't moved a hundred yards in the past three days.  We were having a good, but not great day until we found those trout late in the morning.  Jennifer and I held our own, but Curt just wore them out on the Swim Bait.  As a matter of fact, we caught every single fish on a shad colored swim bait or a shad colored Swim Bait .  It was also the hottest color for us the next two days.

Curt and Jennifer with a pair of solid fish caught Monday.  Curt did some serious upgrading with his Swim Bait following this quick picture

The Swim bait we are using the most is the 3-inch Usual Suspect, but we have also caught some of our largest trout on the 4-inch version.  The rain hasn't slowed the bite at all thus far and as well as we are doing, the waders are possibly doing even better.  We have found fish on every major flat on the north end as well as the flat between Madam Johnson's and the Gator Hole.

I haven't fished the revetment wall this entire week, but it was only because I haven't had to.  They are apparently still catching tout on live shrimp as well as the VuDu SHrimp under a cork.  Eric Ronning over at Daleys said they got over 200 packs Wednesday and sold them all before they could even put them on the wall.  Simon's said they can't keep any in as well.

I am wondering just how hard they are going to be to find when the cork bite under the gulls cranks up in the next few weeks!