Colburn's Sabine Connection

Ugh.....what a day to cancel!

There have not been many days over the past two months that I hated rescheduling or canceling, but today was one of them.  I got canceled at 2:00 a.m. due to the fact that my group was apparently way down on their luck, but making a come back at the black jack table.  It has happened before, but this time they lost money and missed a potentially very good fishing trip as well,  I say that, but they may have gotten hot and won a pile of money!?

We had a very good day yesterday wading a shallow flat off the ICW.  The water was ugly, but the trout were there and they were hungry.  We caught and released probably 20 fish in the 3 to 6 pound class and set a couple of really good trout loose a little quicker than intended.  We had both of them at hand, but never actually picked them up while trying to get our lure back.

It was foggy and warm and a light wind just made things even better.  I should have gone today anyway, but I am speaking at a Beaumont CCA meeting tonight and I had a few other things to finish up.  It looks as though tomorrow will be no bargain with rain, a howling north wind and lower temperatures in the forecast.  The good news is that the trout were where they should be for at least one day and they won't move far.

We may be looking at a good weekend!

We waited until the very last minute last night to re-schedule today's trip and as it turned out, we would have been okay in spite of a pretty stiff east wind. At the time we called it off, it was pouring, the lights were out and the north wind was howling!

We did get more runoff as the bayous and ditches were full and dirty this morning.  The wind hurt us Thursday, but we found  some clear water and did better than expected Wednesday.  I released two trout over six and another over five fishing a Texas Chicken floating Fat Boy in three feet of very dirty water between nine and ten o'clock.  I also had 3 or 4 more that I put back that were solid keepers before they quit as quickly as they started.  Those were the first really good trout I have caught in a while!

I killed the remainder of the morning playing with much smaller trout in Coffee Ground.  Believe it or not, there were only 5 or 6 other boats in the area and the small trout and redfish were doing their thing.  You could have probably caught them on anything as they bit several colors in a Flats Minnow and Sea Shad as well as red shad and chicken on a chain Diedappers.

We are baseballing this weekend, but it looks like the weather will be in your favor.  The runoff will probably dirty things up pretty badly behind the islands, but the rest of the lake should be in great shape.  If the wind will let up...... there is a lot of water that has not been fished in a while!

Four out of six was better than expected!

The wind was blowing the wrong direction for us yesterday evening, but I was more into culling waders that leaked in a little warmer water.  Two of the six pair just boarded the garbage truck, but four out of six was better than I anticipated .  In between walking back and forth to the rocks to slip on another pair we chunked Catch 2000's and Soft-Dines into the wind in 3 to 5 feet of water.

Luckily, the last pair I tried on proved to be dry and I stayed in the water until just after dark with Joel. He fished the entire time (he had on new waders) and enjoyed only one or two strikes until shortly before dark.  We were wading back to the truck when a small school of mullet went airborne and both of our casts resulted in hook-ups.  Both fish proved to be small reds, but over the next hour we caught and released at least a dozen trout in the 20 to 24-inch class!

Joel is consumed with fishing topwaters, but the fish would have nothing to do with a Spook or even the smaller Skitterwalk.  Fishing without freezing fingers was a welcomed change, but don't think for one second that all of this icy weather has killed all of the mosquitoes.  We left the doors open on the truck while we removed our waders and that was a mistake as they quickly honed in on the dome light and any exposed skin in the immediate area!

We apparently got more rain than I thought as the water in the bayous and the river was really ugly, but the lake was still okay.  I can only assume that everyone with a boat was packed into Coffee Ground Cove as we saw a lot of trailers at the launches, but very few boats on the water we were fishing.

A little sun and a lot of fish!

After all but freezing to death for six trout and two redfish Tuesday morning, we more than made up for it yesterday.  I accepted an invitation to look for fish with Capt. Lamar And Eric Roning and it was nice just to see the sun again. We fished in 44 degree water most of the morning, but finally saw some 50 degree stuff around 1:00 o'clock.

At this point it was any color on a quarter ounce head!

The redfish just went ballistic even in the colder water, but the solid trout we caught were harder to find and the bite was very light. I think there was a point where we could have caught redfish on anything in the box, but we pretty much stayed with a DieDapper rigged on a quarter ounce head the entire time. We probably could have caught more trout, however, with a 1/8th ounce head, but we weren't into waiting for the lure to sink when we knew the reds were on the bottom waiting to inhale it!

Hopefully the lows will stay above the 40 degree mark for a while and the surface temperature will once again stabilize in the mid-fifties.  We have a lot of water that we haven't fished over the past month and that alone is exciting.  It has gotten so bad lately that no one says they are going to Sabine Lake....instead they just say Coffee Ground Cove and from what I have seen they are not kidding!

We caught those fish Tuesday morning on the west side of the lake which was very encouraging as we saw only one other boat.  Part of that could have been attributed to the fact that you couldn't see forty feet in the fog and rain and most sane people were not that mad at the fish.  The water clarity was 6 inches at the best and 45 degrees the entire time we fished.  We caught every fish, the trout were decent fish and one of them was close to five pounds, on Catch 2000's over the shell in 3 to 4 feet of water.

If you are one of a growing list that I canceled due to the frigid conditions over the past month give me a call and we will try again.  It is looking like it could get really good in a hurry! 

 

It was a little tougher this week.

We fished only two days this past week, but both of them were pretty decent outings.  The afternoon bite was significantly better than the morning bite in spite of a stiff wind that pinned us down on the La. shoreline.

The day we started early we never caught the first keeper trout until around noon.  We had no problem catching redfish, but we certainly weren't targeting them.  The water we fished had about 8 to 10 inches of visibility and still hadn't made the 50 degree mark when we quit.  The trout we did catch hit glow-chartreuse Diedappers and morning glory Maniac Mullets.  We didn't catch any trout over four pounds.

We started late and finished late the following day and split time drifting and wading.  We waded after deciding that the fish were holding in a very small area that could be better fished out of the boat.  The trout were holding in the whitecaps in 3 to 4 feet of water and they definitly wanted a chartruese-silver Catch 2000.  We tried a lot of other lures, but they wanted the smaller 2000.  We finished with 19 trout up to five pounds and three slot reds.

We made repeated drifts initially because of the number of big mullet in the area.  Finding mullet that large rarely does me much good, but they were the ticket this time.  They stopped jumping or just left well before dark and when they did our bite died as well.  Even in the whitecaps you had no problem detecting a strike as the trout were super aggressive!

It looks like this week is not only going to be wet, but another one of those cold every other day weeks which won't do much for improving surface temperatures.  If nothing else it should keep fishing pressure to a minimum as you have to really be mad at the fish to grind in this weather.