Colburn's Sabine Connection

Tired of unning south!

We got in three decent days last week and while we caught fish, catching a matter of doing what we had to do rather than what we wanted to do.  The saving grace for me on two of those days was that I was fishing eight year old  youngsters and every fish, regardless of size, was a thrill.  I fished the ship canal with the rest of the world and we caught 15 to 18 inch trout, a few slot reds and some very nice flounder.  Morning glory, plum and electric chicken Lil' Johns and Sea Shads rigged on quarter ounce heads produced all of our fish.

We made the best of a weak incoming tide two days and the rain got us just as the tide changed the third day.  The water from Willow to Green's is the prettiest water in the lake, but it is almost impossible to fish due to the increasing number of crab traps.  There are crab traps where I have never seen them before and the mouths of the bayous have a crab float every 2 to 3 feet well out into the main lake. I ran about 12 miles of Black's last Friday and there were crab trap lines the entire way.  There was no place a live bait fisherman could anchor near the shoreline and have enough room to make a cast!

The tough bite is still keeping a lot of very good flats fishermen off the lake right now, but they are going to freak out when they return only to find that they can't even drift fish their favorite areas.  I can catch a few redfish and flounder on the north end of the lake, but I would not want my life to depend on catching a trout.  The water is slowly improving and I am hoping that the bite will just turn on over night!

 

Hot, but no rain and that is a good thing!

This has definitely been the most consistent week we have had in a while.  The water clarity continues to improve and we have pretty much moved a little farther north each day.  I took a day off yesterday and drove up to T-Bend to fish crappie with Jim Franklin and Rodney Lowrey.  We fished with Stephen Johnston and we were limited and I was on my way back by noon.  Better known for his bass fishing skills, Stephen is very much on top of catching crappie over his open water brush piles as well. Our average fish was very nice!

There were more boats than birds today, but there were still enough to keep you on the fish.  We certainly didn't fight it and still finished with two limits of reds and 14 trout.  We fished cork rigs only because we wanted to as the fish were hitting Usual Suspects and Li' Johns just as well.  Earlier in the week we also had a decent top water bite and a five inch Assassin worked better than the shorter tails on our larger fish.

The best box of trout that I saw came off the jetties Wednesday.  The big fish was just over six pounds and they did not have a trout under three pounds.  They caught those fish on chicken on a chain Gambler tails.  The flounder bite is still going strong, but most folks are passing on that bite now that the trout action is more consistent.  The largest flounder we have caught came out of deeper water in the ship channel. 

Catching not bad in spite of more rain.

Well, so much for yet another round of sepsis and more kidney stones too large to pass. I managed  to fish my way through 2 surgeries and dealing with a stent over the past five weeks and I am now convinced that a stent is far more uncomfortable than the worst kidney stone I have ever had to deal with and there have been many since 1971. Fortunately, my pain threshold is very high, but I did vow on the way back to the landing in three foot waves yesterday that I won't fish until the stent is removed in the future.  Must be getting old!

Due to having to shuffle trips around the surgeries, I had to move a two day trip to this past weekend (stent was still in...... they took it out today!) and in spite of some very rank weather we did well.  Saturday was a grind, but we returned to the same areas Sunday and beat up on the reds, flounder and trout pretty good.  All of our flounder were very nice fish with two of them pushing the four pound mark.

We caught most of our keeper trout in the ship channel and they were just keepers with only a couple of fish in the three pound class.   We found the reds working under the birds and the majority of them were 22 to 26 inch fish.  The monsoon that roared in while we were cleaning fish won't help us any,  but a lot of the water on the La. side of the lake really looked good.  We also saw a lot of brown shrimp both in the ship channel and the main lake.

While waiting out the rain after Coco Hardin's memorial service at the Boat Club, I spoke with some folks that caught both flounder and redfish in Coffee Ground Cove fishing Gulp shrimp under a cork.  They caught their fish early Saturday and Sunday.  Coco and the Hardin family have virtually been a part of the Sabine River from Conway's to East Pass for many years.  Look for his grandson, Lamar, and great grandson, Wyatt, to continue the tradition!