Colburn's Sabine Connection

Snakes, ants and fresh water!

I have run the river and the bayous far more than I intended to over the past few days and the water is still high. It will be a while before we are catching trout on the north end of the lake again.  The water is still over the roads in some areas and there is a lot of standing water in the adjacent woods and marshes.  Because it is fresh water that flooded us rather than a salty  push from the Gulf, the gators appear to be doing just fine as long as they stay out of flooded homes and garages, but at the same time the high water and warmer temperatures have put a snake or, in many cases, several snakes on bushes and low hanging limbs.

I found a partially submerged pallet in the Conway's Bayou area covered up by more snakes than I could accurately count.  Out of no less than a dozen, only one of them was a cottonmouth.  Capt. Chuck's theory that every snake is a cobra and should be avoided is undoubtedly the safest approach right now.  A friend that has had to sweep at least a snake or two off the deck on his houseboat every morning says floating pods of red ants have been a bigger problem for him.  He waded into them twice while helping folks in the West Bluff area and his lower body is covered with bites.

There is no doubt that the power of the flood waters roaring down the Sabine not only purged the marshes of lay down timber, but apparently uprooted even more as I have never seen this many semi-submerged trees and logs in the river and ICW.  Be careful even when running the north end of the lake. The river is as dirty as you would expect, but the bayous and drains are as clear as Toledo Bend which is also a little strange.

Once again, I would like to thank Gary Stelly and his crew at KOGT for monitoring everything that was going on throughout the flood.  As they do in every major weather event, they not only kept us abreast of up to the minute conditions, but even ahead of impending problems in many instances.  If you lived in Orange or Newton County, your radio was tuned into 1600 AM  24/7 for the better part of the week.

Don't forget......any thing you can do to help the folks in Deweyville will be greatly appreciated as much of town has yet to even start drying out and assessing damages.    

THANKS!!!!!!!

We are dry and watching the water slowly recede.  It wasn't until we unpacked every thing that we had moved out following a mandatory evacuation order and plugged in the computer that I discovered all of the emails from clients and readers of this blog offering to help in any way they could.  While we managed to get it done in a frenzied state of mind, I was still overwhelmed by your kindness and more appreciative than any words can express!

The flooding is over so you can just park right over there by the boat launch.....umh!!!!!!

I hope to personally thank each of you in the near future as well as the many friends that kept my cell phone lit up.  I don't know if my cramped fingers were due to loading sandbags or trying to peck out replies to text messages.  Probably a little bit of both.  This place is still a mess and while the worst is over we still have a lot of flooding. The folks in Deweyville have a long road ahead of them and both deserve and need any help that you can give them.

I am not sure how quickly I will be back on the water, but it will be a while before the fish in Sabine Lake enjoy acceptable salinity levels. It was a struggle most days prior to the flooding so just like last year, we are off to another rocky start.  The launches in Orange are still under water, but every launch in Bridge City is okay.  Thanks again to all of you!    

 

It was blowing 7 mph indoors!

Other than the fact that they occasionally get the direction right, wind forecasts are totally useless.  The wind, on the best of days, is going to be a pain in March, so outside of an approaching storm forecast, rely on nothing but direction in planning your day.  Yesterday was a prime example.  If the wind was truly blowing only 7 mph at daylight, we would have to evacuate with a 20 mph forecast!

The silver lining was that it forced me to fish an area that I had no intention of fishing and I very nearly limited on trout up to four pounds in the process.  I was slowly cruising along bucking the waves trying to talk myself out of not just calling in the dogs when I saw a trout clear the water chasing small shad. I was still in the Intracoastal, so if nothing else, I was pleased to see trout north of the lake.

I dropped the troll motor over and eventually caught two keeper fish in about a 400 yard stretch.  By that time the wind was sure enough howling and I decided to stay in semi- protected stretches of the ICW and see if that bite was a fluke.  Over the next two hours I caught seven more keepers on a pink silver sided Top Dog, Jr. working the shoreline.  On the way back in, I fished the bulkheads that I had passed up on the other side of the canal with an Echo 1.75 crankbait and caught several smaller slot reds before going home.

A bite is a bite and there is no doubt that there are still plenty of trout on the north end of the lake in spite of all of the fresh water.  They are currently not any easier to catch or even locate for me right now, but they are there.  I look forward to visiting with a lot of y'all at the Sabine-Neches CCA banquet in Pt. Arthur tonight!

Lots of fishing.....not much catching!

We made a decent trip yesterday, but certainly nothing to brag about. We caught five solid trout fishing Fat Boys on the Intracoastal side of Sidney Island and kept seven redfish that we caught fishing crankbaits against the bulkheads.  We had a weak outgoing tide and the water was really silted up. The surface temperature was also about five degrees lower than it has been.  I am hoping that we missed a better bite by not getting out early enough as we did the bulk of our trout catching in the first thirty minutes.

The best water we found was in Coffee Ground and that was about 6 to 8 inches of clarity.  We caught only one small trout there and several rat reds that hit a Lil John under a cork. We canceled yet another trip today and it looks like it was a good decision because the wind has howled all morning and it looks like it is going to pour as well.

At least for the next week or so, if you can't handle dirty water and wind...... you better stay home and clean reels!