Colburn's Sabine Connection

Numbers better....size isn't!

We are catching undersized trout all over the lake.  Yesterday we stumbled up on two schools of redfish that stayed on the surface longer than usual. One minute you are bored to death and working your butt off and thirty minutes later you are worn out with three limits of redfish in the box.  They can be a trip saver, but you can burn a lot of gas looking for them right now!

Once again it was pelicans that ratted out the reds....not gulls.  The reds were chasing shad to the surface.  Both schools were a mile or so out from the south revetment wall. We never stopped to target flounder, but possibly should have as we only kept six trout.  Most of the trout ate a glow chartreuse tail under a popping cork, but the better fish ate a gold/orange Skitterwalk.

As far as I can tell the flounder run is yet to begin, but we have been catching very decent numbers up to three pounds working the main lake shoreline with gulp and swim baits.  That pattern is more productive for us on a high tide that floods the grass.  Space Guppy has been the best color in the 3-inch Usual Suspect and smoke or chartreuse in the Gulp.

The water is still in really good shape and there is a lot of bait all over the north end, but the larger trout have just not been there for us. The water hyacinth is also starting to thin out in the bayous making it easier and safer to run.

Wind slowed our bite down

We had a pretty decent flounder bite going and were catching just enough trout to prove that we went fishing, but the wind has blown our bite out the past couple of days.  Hopefully, this next  little front will push a few more shrimp out of the marshes and the wind will settle back down.

We were catching our better flounder as well as a few redfish with a cock of the walk Usual Suspect Swim Bait.  The trout we caught ate either a bone One Knocker or chrome/chartreuse She Dog.  I have seen very few birds working on the north end, but I did get a report that they were working some in the afternoon.  I also saw a box of two flounder and thirteen very nice trout today that were caught on the ship channel south of the Causeway. They were bouncing tails off the shell in 8 to 12 feet of water.

The water clarity  has held up pretty well in spite of the wind.  Be careful when running through the matted hyacinth choking off Adams and Cow Bayou.  There are some large floaters mixed in the vegetation that will ruin your day!

 

North wind helped!

We didn't lose as much water as I had hoped, but a stiff north wind at least kept the marshes draining across the weekend.  There was also more bird activity than I had seen in a while.  For the most part, they were working over redfish or small trout and much of that activity was just north of Blue Buck point.

The water clarity is still very good all over the lake and while the bite wasn't great, we were pleased to find a few decent trout scattered across the flats on the north end of the lake.  We stuck with plastics under a cork most of the day, but I did see some folks drifting mullet on a Carolina rig catch several redfish.  I don't fish watermelon a great deal, but it has worked well lately.

The flounder bite also continues to be pretty steady, but we are having to target them to do well.  We have done much better fishing the shoreline than the drains or mouths of the bayous with 3-inch Usual Suspects and Gulp.  We have also caught a couple of fish over 5 pounds and that is unusual for me when fishing shorelines.

There is a steady stream of bait working about 5oo yards off the shoreline all the way from Coffee Ground to Johnson's.  Look for the fish and birds to find them in the very near future!