Colburn's Sabine Connection

Bad finish to a great day!

Upon returning to my boat with some zip lock bags, my initial fear was that at least one of my two clients had slipped and hurt himself.  One was sitting on the floor of the boat with a dazed look on his face and the other was lying face down half in and half out of the boat.  Fortunately, neither of them were hurt and the one lying face down had laughed himself into that position!

While attempting to be helpful and lift a very solid mixed catch of trout, flounder and reds from the boat to the cleaning table, my dazed client slipped and dumped the entire catch in the bayou. He was more embarrassed than hurt and Capt. Eric further eased any pain by graciously giving him some fillets from his catch the previous day.

Lots of flounder this size doing their thing right now.

The good news is that we caught a lot of fish and released a huge red that demolished a Split tail eel fished under the gulls.  We are still catching our better trout later in the day, but the bite under the gulls improved in the mornings as well later in the week.  We didn't fish exclusively for flounder very much, but when we did it was good.  We caught flatfish up to four pounds and limited twice.

Art wore us out on flounder up to four pounds with the new Swimming Mullet.

 

Easily our hottest bait was Gulp's new twin tail mullet.  I especially like it because it still works when the fish bite one of the tails off.  We also caught both reds and flounder on a 4-inch Usual Suspect with a dab of Pro Cure added to the side.  I think it is the menhaden scent, but the stuff I am doing so well with is marked flounder magic.  Keith Daley over at Daley's Hunt N Fish tinkered around with the formula and added some glitter to the mixture.  It is thick enough to stay on the bait and as it sinks the glitter slowly disperses.  It looks just like the tiny scales of a bait fish that has just been attacked by a predator fish.

Some of the reds under the gulls are not in the slot!

He had ten bottles on the counter when I bought mine, but as I expected it was all gone when I went back to get the rest the following day.  He promised to mix up more this week.  He also pulled off what I consider to be a minor miracle as I was in a serious bind at the time .  The easy lift bracket on my troll motor imploded with me booked solid for ever.  Somehow, Keith and the folks at Minn Kota were able to get one to his store in one day and I didn't miss a single day!

He admitted that it was quicker than even he could have imagined, but that he can almost always get customers any motor Minn Kota motor they want in less than three days and that when they buy it from him the store will handle any warranty work as well.  That is especially nice for a procrastinating guide that runs a motor to its last gap and needed a new one yesterday.  

Evenings better than mornings right now!

Very little has changed the past two days and that's not all bad nor is it all good.  I have had trouble catching trout three pounds and up, but you can catch trout from 12 to 14 inches from the time you hit the lake until you quit.  Fortunately there have been some nice reds mixed in with them.  A stiff north-northeast wind has made fishing the west side of the lake a little tough and the gulls on the east side are getting a lot of attention.

The water is in great shape and we have had the benefit of a good outgoing tide later in the day.  There is still a lot of water in the back lakes, but even at that there are an incredible number of shrimp in the main lake.  A Vudu shrimp as well as almost any four inch tail or Gulp Swimming Mullet fished under a cork will work on the school trout.  Our largest trout, however, are coming on five inch tails rigged on a 1/8th ounce head and Crazy Croakers.

The flounder bite is easily the best bite for ratio of keepers to throwbacks.  We have been catching them on the new Gulp twin tail Swimming Mullet and four inch Sea Shads with a little Pro Cure applied to each side.  Smoke and chartreuse have been our two best colors.  Best of all, the average flounder of late has been in the 3 pound class!

I usually don't fish the afternoons, but the folks I talk with everyday say that from 2:00 pm until dark has been much better than the morning hours.  The biggest difference has been the fact that the gulls have held tighter and the fish under them have been a little larger.  We made a couple of early wades hoping to start the day with better trout, but that hasn't worked for us this week.

The bottom line is, that at least for now, given a choice I would sleep in and take advantage of the late evening bite. 

Catching is great......keeping fish is tougher!

While we certainly can't complain about the conditions, the keeper to throwback ratio got tougher for us from Monday through Friday.  The high tides have the better trout scattered, but you can still cull pretty decent limits if you can work enough schools of fish.  That, however, continues to get more difficult each day.

As the week progressed the boat traffic increased and every flock of gulls was quickly assaulted by boats from every direction.  The key to catching the best of the fish to be had was to hang around after the armada raced away and watch for shrimp on the surface.  That was especially true with the redfish mixed in these schools.

For the most part it was akin to a bumper car ride early, but by noon you could have fished in your underwear and no one would have been around to notice.  Just about the time traffic thinned out due to virtually no help from the birds, the wind would get up and it was back to drifting the flats for us.  The largest trout we caught all week long was only four pounds and most keeper fish averaged 16 to 18 inches.

Part of the reason for catching far more more small trout than keepers later in the week was also due to changing the daily game plan due to diminishing water clarity.  We had been starting each morning catching some very good trout in the river before even running out to the lake, but the runoff finally got here and just killed that action.  The water on the north end of the lake also got dirtier each day.

The fishing pressure isn't going to thin out much even with hunting season kicking off, but the catching will continue to get better as water levels start falling.  The whole world is pounding away at about a third of the lake and that will change as well in the very near future.  This is a great time to get the kids on the water as they are going to catch good numbers of fish even on the slow days.  And, if you settle under the right flock of birds, the size will be there as well.

We have been catching a lot of our fish under a cork with a 4-inch Seas Shad and color hasn't been a big deal.  When swimming it on a jig head, however, chicken on a chain, violet moon and candy corn have been our best colors.  A 1/8th head is harder to throw, but it will get you more bites due to the slower fall.

Judging by the jam packed Louisiana launch at the Causeway every morning I am guessing that the annual flounder bite at the LNG plant is also improving.  I don't participate in that rat race, but it can be incredibly good for the fishermen that anchor up well before first light each day. Louisiana's more liberal limits lure the Texas fishermen across the Causeway every fall.  

A good week that will only get better!

In spite of exceptionally high tides and bulging water levels that keep the bait scattered in the bayous and the river, we still enjoyed better than average catching all week long.  Fortunately, we started the week by canceling Monday due to the weather forecast and it proved to be a good decision.  The powerful storm raced across the area in a hurry and while it didn't drop an excessive amount of rain, it packed a lot of wind.

A really tough south wind slowed things down Friday, but  only because we couldn't fish much of the lake. We still managed to catch trout under the birds in the whitecaps, but a lot of them were small fish.  Tuesday through Thursday, every pattern we fished worked and we finshed each day with good mixed bag of trout, redfish and some very solid flounder.

The gulls worked a little each morning around East Pass, but they attracted a lot of attention and the fish we caught under them were small.  The trout we found working under only a handful of gulls in the mid-lake lake area, however, were nice fish and there were some slot reds mixed in as well.  We caught fish on several different colored tails, but easily the hottest length and color was a 5-inch Tidal Surge Split Tail in guano.  Guano looks very much like chicken on a chain.

We also did very well Wednesday with a Vudu Shrimp under a TKO cork and I hadn't fished the Vudu much at all thus far this fall. Once the wind slowed the bite in the open lake around noon each day we were able to extend our catching by swimming a Usual Suspect in 8 to 12 feet of water and caught not only solid trout, but most of our flounder at that depth as well.  Silver shiner and firetiger were the best two colors for us. The water clarity is great in the rivers and the ICW and the only thing slowing that bite down at all is the high water.

If we do, in fact, see some colder weather Monday and a big north wind lowers the water level the catching is just going to get "stupid good" over night.  Right now you can stand on the deck of the boat  while fishing the shoreline of the lake and see the flooded back water lakes over the top of the marsh grass.  That means there is no good reason for the redfish or the bait to leave until it gets sucked down to the mud!

My wife would tell you that it is not surprising, but once again I have managed to discard several names and numbers of folks that I promised to call when the bite improved that were jotted down on the backs of envelopes, etc scattered across my desk.  If I haven't called and you wanted to fish with me personally, call again as I now have only six days open in November and eight days in December.  I do work with two other guides that are as good or better than I am, but their calendars are filling up as well.  Those are two of the most enjoyable and consistently good months to fish on Sabine! 

 

Better safe than sorry........sometimes!

Up until noon, I was changing hooks on lures, etc. and very much disappointed that we had allowed the weatherman to talk us into backing up another trip.  I would not have wanted to be on the water when the brief storm roared through, but other than a slow steady rain it is nice enough now.  I am not going to watch the weather tonight and we will fish tomorrow!

We had a very good week last week on both trout and redfish.  There was a little more bird activity Friday, but we never stopped what we were doing to check them out.  Lamar Belcher and his crew hit one bunch for just a little while the first thing Friday morning and said most of the trout were keeper fish.  The water is still high so you have to work for your fish as they are spread out even in the bayous and the river.

We haven't been able to spend much time on the west side of the lake due to an east wind that has blown every day.  It looks like we will have to deal with a south wind this week.  She Dogs, Usual Suspects, and Assassin Sea Shads fished under a cork were the best choices for us all of last week.  Water clarity is still very good and the tide changes have been fairly strong as well.