Colburn's Sabine Connection

Catching trout has been a challenge!

We have endured some pretty serious rain events over the past week and the water clarity has taken a hit on the north end of the lake.   The bayous are muddier and some of the storms have also produced a lot of lightning!

It looks like we are going to get even more rain today.  The trout bite took the biggest hit as they are once again difficult to pattern.  Even when we find the schools of shad on the surface the keeper trout have not been there with them.  The saving grace has been the fact that the reds are still doing their thing all over the lake.  You have to be close to the right spot when they surface in a feeding frenzy, but they seldom miss a day chasing shad.

If you can avoid a thunderstorm, the afternoon hours have been the best. Choice of lures has not been too important.  It would be hard to beat a tail rigged under a cork, but they will hit everything from plastics to a Hoginar.  I don't know if we are just looking in all the wrong places, but we have been unable to figure out the trout.  We'll keep looking!

Squeezed one more trip in ahead of the rain!

We have had something going on every night this week, thus the reason for no reports.  The catching has been better than average for us and I have not had to run too far to get it done.  The wind messed us up a little a couple of days as it made it very hard to locate fish in the open lake.  Our best trips included a good start each morning, but we didn't find the trout early every day.  When we did find them they were chasing mullet in less than two feet of water and eating topwaters.

The weather and the catching has been hot!

When the trout weren't there, the redfish were, but the bite wasn't as strong.  The terns and a few gulls are working over schools of shad from East Pass all the way to Blue Buck, but not every school of shad is holding fish.  Trout made the difference in our better trips as catching redfish has not been too tough most days.  I am guessing the afternoon hours are even better than the the mornings as we struggled until noon on two occasions.

First red, but not the last.

We have been throwing tails under a cork and crawling a Swim Bait across the bottom.  We squeezed a trip in this morning only because it looks like we may be in for a lot of rain next week. We never left the shallow flats and finished with 6 reds and 13 trout.  We were a little hesitant to run off too far and the bite was fast enough to keep us interested. I hope this system doesn't camp out on us like it has in Louisiana as we don't need more of the flooding we suffered through all spring.  The water is in great shape right now!

Don't forget about the Orange County CCA banquet Thursday night.  It has just gotten bigger and better every year and they really do it right.  The steaks are great and they have some super auction items!

It is hot.... but a good bite if you can stand the heat!

Mother nature sure didn't do the 261 individuals fishing the OCARC tournament any favors today.  It was hot as heck and the wind made fishing the open lake tough.  Even at that, I can guarantee you that the SALT team handling the weigh in will still have to weigh and measure a pile of bass and redfish!

We have really had a very good week.  The wind has been a little tough on the afternoon fishermen, but we have done well on both the trout and redfish in the mornings.  We finally had our first trout over six pounds in a while and a couple more in the five pound class.  The biggest fish hit a Lil' John and the other two ate topwaters before the sun came up.  Our average trout, even when chasing after pods of shad have been solid 16 to 19 inch fish and a lot of them are full of eggs.

I don't know how the redfish bite can get any better and I think the trout bite will continue to improve provided we avoid any major storms. Right now, at least for me, the trout have been everywhere one morning and hiding out the next. If you plan on taking advantage of this bite bring about twice as much water as you thought you could ever drink....you can always take some home. Also, Cow bayou is just packed with water hyacinth and there have been a lot of overheated engines lately.  There are also a few big floaters hiding in all of that vegetation as well so be careful!