Colburn's Sabine Connection

Water in good shape for no good reason!

The catching will have to stay good for longer than two or three days for me to believe that we have turned the corner, but once again we caught a little break with the wind and had a couple of pretty good days.  We even found a few gulls working over solid school trout two days in a row and it has been a while since that happened.

The water clarity is incredibly good considering what the bayous and river looks like.  With the exception of the flats just off the ICW (that water even had a foot or better visibility on the incoming tide) we fished very few places that you couldn't see a lure two feet deep and that was unexpected.  The shad are all over the lake and we have found more fish chasing them than shrimp.

I got numerous good trout reports from the jetties and, while that didn't surprise me, I still won't be going down there to find out.  I am not the guide to call if that interests you, but I work with a number of other guides that will be more than glad to put you on that bite.

Our larger trout the past few days have shown up in the middle of the day and they are eating She Dogs and Spook, Jrs..  I am pretty sure Skitterwalks and most any surface walking lure will work just as well.  The best trout we caught ate a client's gold/orange One Knocker.  Tails and Vudu shrimp fished under a cork have produced most of our fish, but they will eat Swim Baits and tails rigged on a one-eighth ounce head as well. Lighter colors have worked much better in the clearer water for us.

It looks like another round of thunder showers Monday, but Tuesday looks okay at this point.  Don't forget to sign the kids up for the STAR tournament as a $50,000 bump on their college education would qualify as a memorable day on the water.  It only takes one fish!

We may finally be turning the corner!

For the better part of last week we continued to get beat up by the wind, both the Neches and the Sabine were high and muddy and I caught just about as many fish on the way to the landing as I did once on the water.  Even with a decent outgoing tide the wind kept the lake level stacked up in the cane.

Joe Matthews enjoys a long battle with a nice slot red.

We got our first break with the wind Thursday morning and the fish were right where you would expect them to be this time of the year.  We certainly didn't slay them by any means, but we caught flounder, trout and reds and all of them were solid fish. A couple of the trout ate topwaters, but a Usual Suspect Swim bait accounted for the majority of the fish.  It was an enjoyable trip for a change!

This solid trout ate a Super Spook,Jr. after the wind laid down.

With the promise of exactly the same conditions for the following morning we decided to take a chance with the weatherman and he somehow managed to guess right.  We had an even better trip, especially with the trout, but we fished an entirely different pattern than the day before.  That may also explain why we didn't catch the first redfish.

We did keep a nice mess of solid trout up to four pounds along with four flatfish, one of whcih was a very sizeable flounder.  Once again, the Usual Suspect came through, but we also caught probably half of the trout fishing a Vudu shrimp under a cork.  I got Jason throwing that setup when he fished with me last year and he climbed in the boat with one tied on his line Friday morning.  He wore us and the trout out with it most of the morning!

We are still not finding our trout anywhere near the shoreline.  Even when drifting a shoreline we are catching our fish a cast or two off the bank.  The best depth for me, even when we were on the flats was 3 1/2 to 4 feet deep.  The rivers, the bayous north of the lake and much of Blacks were still muddy Friday evening.  The Sabine was so dirty you had to wipe  a topwater off every time you reeled it in!

The clarity in the lake, however, was very much improved by Thursday morning and looked downright good almost everywhere we fished Friday.  I also got several reports that much of the ship channel was also in great shape again.  I look for some very good fish to be weighed in this weekend in the S.A.L.T Memorial Day Tournament.

It will probably start snowing or a typhoon will blow in Monday, but if the wind will just hold where it is right now..... we may be turning the  corner.  The birds were even starting to rat out a few school trout and they haven't been able to find a shrimp in the whitecaps for the past month.

Hope you can share the holiday with your family and will take a moment to honor all of the men and women, both past and present, that thankfully didn't take our freedom for granted!

 

A big southwest wind could make it tough the next few days!

I feel reasonably certain that the wind will blow like hell tomorrow based on the "every other day" trend of the past three days.  Tuesday we got blown away early only to have it calm down that afternoon and the fish turned on like they hadn't eaten in a while.  It was cold and rained most of the day, but we caught trout on everything from topwaters to tails in 4 to 18 feet of water from 2 p.m. until we quit.

The following morning it was still raining and the wind was howling again, but we stayed in the bayous and kept six redfish and nine flounder before calling in the dogs early.  We got a little later start today and should have started earlier as the wind was a little more user friendly again.  We still wore out a good mess of trout with a pearl chartruese She Dog and a chartreuse Skitterwalk drifting in 3 to 5 feet of water.

It is very frustrating knowing the fish are holding so well on some of the flats and not being able to fish them due to the wind.  I think it is going to swing around to the southwest tomorrow and depending on how hard it blows it could eliminate some very productive water.  I would run south, but I haven't gotten a good report from that end of the lake in over a week.  The best news is that I am seeing some huge pods of shad in the open lake, more shrimp on the shorelines and the water clarity is holding up pretty well with 6 inches to a foot of visibility on the north end of the lake. 

Too much wind to pick your spots!

Fishing dirty water taxes your confidence anyway, but fishing dirty water where you didn't want to fish in the first place is double tough.  For three consecutive days we have had to fish where we could rather than where we wanted to and the open lake was out of the question yesterday.  If we could get 10 to 15 mph winds I think we could just smoke the fish as they are right where they should be this time of the year.

We caught reds on both ends of the slot...some were too small and some like Josh's 10-pounder were too large!

The first morning we had nine nice trout and two reds before the wind blew us off a shallow flat, the following morning we hit it a little late and enjoyed a decent topwater bite for less than an hour and yesterday there was just  no way to fish the open lake.  We stayed in the ICW and caught drum and redfish until we were sufficiently bored.

I don't know what to expect for the weekend as I have seen a couple of forecasts that didn't mention gale force winds.....we will see.  The southerly winds combined with a big incoming tide have stacked the water up in the bayous and drains off the river.  The water clarity, however, is still pretty darn good in sections of the ICW and both of the rivers.

If you like to eat 15 to 20 inch drum, just tie on a Hoginar and vertical jig the 12 to 18 foot breaks on the ICW.  They are stacked up along with redfish of all sizes.

 

More wind and poor water clarity pose a challenge!

The wind continues to be the major stumbling block for us right now and the forecast is not all that bright for the remainder of the week.  There were some great fish caught this weekend in the Riverfest tournament, so the quality is still there in spite of the silted up water and whitecaps on the flats!

The winning trout was over eight pounds, the largest red weighed 8.75 pounds and wasn't even 27 inches long and the winning flounder weighed 5.61 pounds.  That has also been the case with the few fish that we have been catching when we can choose our spots, which has not been often enough!

Peggy Carroll, an LPGA teaching pro at Memorial Park In Houston fooled a very nice trout in the wind!

Peggy Carroll, an LPGA teaching pro at the Houston Memorial course caught a personal best tout right off the bat fishing with me last week and thirty minutes later we were surfing across the flat.  We have been getting a brief window of manageable wind at daylight, but it picks up quickly.  Yesterday we boxed seven nice trout and two slot reds in twenty minutes only to call it quits and reschedule less than an hour later.  The shrimp poor boy at Peggy's On The Bayou was a much better option.

A short break in the wind made the catching a little easier!

Even in the wind we have managed to find schooling reds on two occasions that saved our day.  They are moving in a hurry, however, and it is hard to see the shrimp and shad between the whitecaps. I think this entire week is going to be a grind, but most of my clients still want to fish and we will explore every option.  Hopefully, we can figure out something good and the next report will be more encouraging.  Don't, however, ever cancel a fishing trip based solely on what you read here!