Colburn's Sabine Connection

Not great..... but I would gladly take yesterday's bite every day!

On what was supposed to be a rainy day, Ty, John, and Mark joined me for a very good day of catching under perfect conditions on Monday.  Surprisingly enough, the only thing we did not catch was flounder, but we beat up on the trout and reds pretty good.

The slot reds were running the shoreline in small schools and any time you found one..... you found a bunch.  Most of those fish were in less than three feet of water.  We caught them on Usual Suspects and four inch Sea Shads under an H & H TKO cork.  We caught some solid trout in the same areas, but the majority of our better trout hit the same baits minus the cork in 8 to 12 feet of water.  Once the outgoing tide picked up the trout bite really improved.

The water clarity is still very good all over the lake and in the river.  I am still not seeing any gulls working, but we are not looking at much of the lake due to a pretty stiff north east wind that picks up around ten o'clock every day.  There is no better problem than having to decide which bite to check out first each morning! 

Nice weather and even nicer flounder!

The trade off all of last week, high water and a pretty stiff east wind for cooler tempeatures, was more than acceptable and the catching was consistent if not great.  The real bonus was the occassional big flounder caught while targeting trout and redfish on the protected shorelines.  We caught decent numbers of flat fish as well, but it was the size that delayed chasing the trout and reds.

We had one fish almost eight pounds and two more over the five pound mark.  I have had only one other flounder in my boat in the eight pound class in forty-two years of guiding and I guided for flounder only for twelve years.  Even a five pound flounder is just a special fish as far as I am concerned!

This nice flounder caught in the river almost made the six pound mark!

Our largest flounder were caught fishing the shoreline in the lake with Swim Baits.....Usual Suspects in Morning Glory and Space Guppy.  We were also rubbing them down good with Pro Cure scent.  The even more consistent flounder bite, however, has been taking place in the river and the ship channel.

The river is also kicking out some pretty respectable redfish!

We have found redfish almost everywhere we have fished and the majority of them are solid slot fish.  We also found some decent trout under the gulls in both the Neches and Sabine two days in a row, but they were not there Friday. In both cases they were chasing small brown shrimp.  I have seen very few gulls working in the north end of the lake lately.

I haven't checked this week's weather guesstimation, but we are going to be on the water regardless.  Once this high water gets blown out it is just going to be crazy good!

It's getting better!

I've got just enough time for a quick report.  Actually I am cooling down after pulling a tire off the trailer due to a blowout that never takes place right in front of a tire dealership.  As Johnny Cormioer has reminded me time an again, I will also back off the lugs onthe other three wheels and apply some never seize on the threads.

Most of the reds have been just the right size.

 

We had a pretty decent day Friday and a very good trip this morning.  For the first time in a long time we even ran across reds schooling on the surface on the north end of the lake.  Some of them were just the right size and some of them were much too big.  I had one fish run off with cork, Sea Shad and 60 yards of braid.  It never stopped the first time.  Had we not seen the fish I would have bet it was a jack or shark.

Today we limited on reds, kept three flounder and 19 solid trout up to four pounds.  The best part of it all was that we never had to work the first gull to get it done.  Some of the fish were in 2 to 4 feet of water and a few of them were in 20 to 24 feet of water.  The water clarity is great in both the river and the lake.

As the result of requests from a surprising number of fishermen that apparently read these reports, I will refrain from mentioning the exact areas where we are catching fish.  I don't think it is that big of a deal as I never point out a spot or lure color that someone else shares with me and wishes to keep quite about.  Oh well..... they are right to some degree that depth, tide, water condition, etc. should continue to help you put together a game plan.  This little front should help the bite!

Redfish saving some rainy days!

I still couldn't do much with the trout, but we put together a pretty solid day Monday.  Since then it has been more cast and try to time out the next thunderstorm.  We kept 13 trout Monday which is a record for me of late, but we also limited on reds and kept four nice flounder.  An east-northeast wind that wasn't too bad and a consistent bite kept us on the La. shoreline most of the morning.

Most of the trout ate a roach colored Sea Shad under a cork and a Top Dog, Jr.  The redfish we kept (we released a number of smaller fish) jumped all over a spinnerbait and a 3-inch glow-chartreuse Usual Suspect.  A weak tide in the morning hours has been of no help either.  The lake continues to give up a little clarity and salinity each day, but the trout we kept were in the dirtiest and freshest water we fished.

The redfish got us through two storm-abbreviated half days after that, but we were afraid to venture too far due to the weather.  We caught our reds the first morning in Black's and the second morning drifting off the south tip of Stewt's.  A handful of terns found the fish for us that we caught off Stewt's.

It is pouring down rain right now and the ditches are full, but it looks like we are still going to give it a try tomorrow.  The only encouraging thing about this group's tenacity is that every time I have tried to cancel them due to the weather in the past we wound up having a big day.  This weill be a "sure-nuf" test!

Haven't seen a four pound trout in a week!

After back to back trips in which we could only find mostly small trout, we opted to fish an afternoon and fared no better.  We are having no problem limiting on redfish early or late, but I have done a damned poor job of figuring the trout bite out.  We haven't fished on the south end and that may well be the best bet, but I spoke with two other guides yesterday that were catching a few flounder early and reds the rest of the morning all the way from the LNG terminal to the end of the jetties.

We have been catching most of our redfish on topwaters and spinnerbaits targeting pods of shad in shallow water.  A pink-silver She Dog and a spinnerbait with a pumpkin-chartreuse Sea Shad body have worked the best for us.  We have also picked up a couple of flounder each trip that ate the spinnerbait.

The water is in great shape, but the tide changes have been weak.  The redfish that we found schooling on the Causeway reef in the mornings were not there for us in the afternoon.  I am still hoping that the predicted coldfront will help the trout bite next week.  We are going to "wait and watch" on the weather tomorrow before deciding to fish or not.  I really believe that the flounder bite is good enough to fish for them only, but I haven't been able to do that this week.  May try that tomorrow!

More water than fish for us.

My wife managed to get the computer straightened out again, but I can assure you that I didn't have much to report during the down time.  I only fished three days last week and I did a heck of a lot more fishing than catching.  We have been weathering a downpour at least once a day, but it was the heavy rains north of us that changed the bite the most.

The water in the river and the lake still has great clarity, but it is high and the afternoon ougoing tide didn't help much.  Two days in a row there was less than a foot of the rocks still above water at Willow bayou. We never found any gulls working in the lake, but we were still able to find a mixed bag of small trout, a few keepers and redfish chasing shrimp in Coffee Ground and south of Green's.

We fished some live bait one trip and 'scraped the wall" part of every trip hoping to find more of the big trout we ran into the week before.  There were some sand trout and smaller specks holding between 22 and 24 feet, but we never found the better trout.  It looks like we will be dodging more thunderstorms this week.  Hopefully the water will drop out a little and we can put together a good program.