Colburn's Sabine Connection

Be safe and get your license!

At least for me, the bite could not have been more different the past two days.  Tuesday morning we were waist deep throwing She Dogs in the direction of rafts of mullet and the bite was very consistent from 5:30 until 9:00 or so.  We kept sixteen trout, released a couple of nice fish and kept two limits of slot reds.

Yesterday I ran back to the same area and never got the first bite.  The bait was still there, but the fish weren't there unless you count gafftop as fish.  There was little or no wind early and I spent the rest of the morning drifting deeper flats until the south wind began to blow.   Just about the time the incoming tide lost its steam and the outgoing kicked in, the bite got really good.

I never caught the first redfish, but with the exception of one really big trout I caught and released, I found 16 to 20 inch trout doing their thing everywhere I checked.  The river and bayous are just crawling with bait, but aside from big mullet I saw very little bait on the flats that I fished in the lake.  I caught a few fish on a stinky pink Sea Shad rigged on a 1/8th ounce head, but most of the fish ate a bone topwater or MirrOlure's new HPSB Pro Dog.  I have only seen 3 or 4 colors in the new bait and they look like they were all made for Sabine trout fishermen.

I can only imagine what the traffic on the lake will look like this weekend, but I would still give topwaters a try on deeper flats where the traffic is lighter.  I probably caught and released a dozen solid trout while drifting a mile off the north revetment wall just looking for schooling reds or bait and saw neither.  I made one run through Black's to check on the flounder, but it looked like they were giving money away judging by the traffic all the way to Green's.

Don't forget......Texas fishing licenses expire this weekend!

Different bite every day for me!

I've been doing a heck of a lot more fishing than catching over the past week or so. That translates to not much to report. We fished the ICW three days in a row and kept 16 trout the first day, 9 the second day and 11 the third  day and never had a fish over five pounds.  Brian Sandow fished with his daughter and had a 28 inch fish and another over 25 so there are some good fish to be caught.

Reggie Romano with a very decent trout that ate a Sea Shad in the ICW.

We got back in the lake the past few days and struggled with the trout, but did okay on the redfish.  The slot reds are very solid and the ones we caught were mixed in with the redfish.  Yesterday we found every one of our trout under slicks, but we couldn't get those fish to eat today.  We caught both our reds and our trout today drifting the flats with tails under a cork or blind casting a Usual Suspect.

The slot reds have been very solid fish.  We've caught most of our reds on tails under a cork.

We got a good outgoing tide around noon and it helped.  There has been a pretty good bite right at daylight and it is tough after that.  I sure can't find anything to blame the tough bite on as the wind hasn't been all that bad and there is a world of bait in the lake.  I can't figure out why the trout will hit a topwater in the ICW one day and won't touch it the next or they will just crush tails at 15 feet one day and I can't find them the next day.

It still beats staying home watching the grass die!

 

We are back at it and it has been good!

I am still a little reluctant to say that we may have turned the corner with the wind making the catching more consistent, but we have done well enough the past couple of days in spite of the wind.  There's a lot more bait in the lake, shrimp included, and that has made the bite much easier.

It has been stupid good when the lake slicks off and you can find the shrimp jumping without any help from the birds and its not hard to spot schooling redfish even in the whitecaps.  I went on my second vacation in the past 42 years last week and I think my family sweated me out all seven days.  I hung in there pretty good until the wind quit blowing on the third day!

We weren't bothered by the ladyfish the past couple of days due to the lack of bait on the surface and we still found plenty of trout and redfish on the north end of the lake.  The trout were easier to stay with than the reds, but when the reds were up it was crazy until they went back down.  I don't think you get as many strikes, but we have been using the 4-inch Usual Suspect rather than the 3-inch and that seems to eliminate the ladyfish as well as the smaller trout.

Roach has been a very good color in both the Flats Minnow and Sea Shad, but the past two trips we have done better with Slammin Chicken and Stinky Pink..especially on the larger trout.  When we have just been drifting and blind casting we are still catching some of the largest croaker I have seen in years.  Maybe they are making a come back. 

Just in time for the OCARC tournament

I managed to sandwich two "Why the heck or we out here" days between two very enjoyable days this week and it was all about the wind or the lack thereof.  After Tuesday and Wednesday I was dreading yesterday's trip, but the Neblett's were not into re-scheduling.

Once again the wind was blowing early forcing us to fish one of the semi-protected flats along the ICW.  After two unsuccessful drifts we switched gears and started our next drift in less than two feet of water.  I picked up a five pound plus trout on the second cast and we caught more trout in the next hour than I had caught in the previous two days!

Not too shabby for a school trout.

Somewhere around 10:00 the lake flattened out and the birds started doing their thing over ladyfish that were just hammering away at the shad.  We stayed hooked up for the next four hours with the unavoidable ladyfish, 17 to 20 inch trout and some very solid slot reds.  We caught several trout in the four pound class under the gulls, but I was even more pleased to find the reds finally doing their thing again.

The redfish finally decided to join the party.

We caught ninety percent of our fish on tails and a Vudu shrimp under a cork, but several of the better fish ate a Usual Suspect Swim Bait in glow chartreuse or space guppy.  I knew finding gulls working over fish was just a matter of being able to fish more of the lake, but I was both shocked and pleased to find the trout so shallow right off the bat that morning.

Hopefully we have turned the corner with the wind and we will all be great fishermen once again.  It isn't too difficult when the fish are jumping out of the water!