Colburn's Sabine Connection

Happy New Year!

We got a couple of really cold and wet trips in this past week and the bite was really good for both trout and redfish.  It took an entire year for it to get this good and now we have some  incredibly cold weather headed our way.  Hopefully we won''t see a redfish kill in the back ends of the cuts.  I have thrown more Fat Boys and Soft-dines than  have in a long time and they caught better trout than anything else we fished.

We have also done well swimming a chicken on a chain Diedapper on a 1/l6th ounce head.  i don't know how long it will take the bite to rebound after some extended below freezing weather, but I plan to hold up and ride it out until it gets a little weather.  Happy New Year....I hope this will be the best year of your life!

 

Merry Christmas!

After a consistent run of very good days we finally had a tough one or at least one that we had to work harder to catch fish.  As the weather has warmed up ahead of the next front it has gotten harder to find the fish bunched up.  Redfish are still pretty easy, but we have found trout anywhere from 3 to 15 feet deep so that leaves you a lot of water to cover!

The river and the lake is still very clear even after the last rain.  We are catching our reds on everything from topwaters to tails.  If you can find the water pouring out of a marsh drain it is all but a sure bet that the reds are there.  We are catching our trout on Catch V's and Soft-dines in 3 to 5 feet of water or dead sticking 4-inch tails in 12 to 15 feet of water.  The deep water strikes are very subtle even though they are solid keeper trout.

The past few days the late afternoon bite has been the strongest. I think we are done through Christmas and it looks like we'll be back to fishing colder water again next week .  Merry Christmas and Happy new Year!

What a day!

I talked with a couple of friends tonight that said the fishing today was a little tougher than yesterday, but there was no way it could have been as good anyway.  The only negative yesterday was that i was alone.  i wasn't going to fish, but I changed my mind around 8:30 and assured the wife that I would only scout a couple of hours.  I had a hard time calling it quits at 3:00!

It was easily the best day I have had this year.  I was limited on trout less than an hour after I put the troll motor down, immediately called two other boats that I knew were out and watched them limited as well.  There were trout under the birds, trout on the shallow shell and trout on the 12 foot breaks all day long.  We fished an outgoing tide, 62 degree water, cloud cover all day and little or no wind.

The best part of the trout bite was that the few trout that I kept were all in the 3 pound class and I released two close to 5 pounds.  For the most part I fished only 4-inch Usual Suspects and 5-inch Seas Shads in opening night and bone diamond.  Had I wanted to fish schooling reds I had at least three opportunities, but the first one i caught was humongous and I moved back to the shorelines.  I still caught probably fifteen slot fish in less than 3 feet of water. Most everyone I talked with caught a lot of reds as well, but a lot of their fish were oversize.

I found schools of small ribbon fish trying to get out of the water twice and both times the larger trout were chasing them.  The shrimp I saw, however, were really small.  I get very few days like yesterday over the course of the year, but I am hoping that this was just the beginning of a great run.

 

 

SNOW?

By the time we made the bone chilling run from the launch to the river, our aspirations had taken a serious hit.  There was very little wind, but it was steady drizzling and much colder than Randy and I anticipated.  Rather than turn around and limp back like wimps, we broke out the crankbaits, put down the troll motor and started fishing the north shoreline.

Our first 7 or 8 fish were bass and I kept five of them for a fish fry.  There were a lot of rat reds mixed in with some upper slot fish.  We probably released 8 to 10 slot fish before I gave way to numb fingers.  The water clarity was still exceptionally good....I don't think today's snow changed that.  We had about 4-inches all over the yard and while it was unexpected, it was beautiful. Its about nine o'clock right now and very little has melted off!

Last night I talked with two friends that waded the north end yesterday afternoon and they finished with a red and nine specks up to five pounds.  Evan said they also missed enough fish to keep them busy most of the evening. They caught their fish on Softdines and Catch V's.  I talked with Steve Simmons over at Outcast Tackle and he said they were expecting a big shipment that very day.  I watched Corey sell his last five to one fisherman over at Rambo's and he immediately ordered more.  If you can find them...buy them all.  Its not unlike scalping a hot football ticket.

Maybe the big trout were just waiting for it to snow in hell  to kick it in gear!

It has been fun all week.

A solid week of user-friendly weather has made for some very consistent catching on Sabine Lake.  If possible, the water has cleared even more and is in fantastic shape.  I am seeing more shad and small mullet than shrimp which makes it a little more difficult for the birds to work over a small area very long, but that's the only complaint

One day the birds are everywhere and the next day they are nowhere to be found, but I would at least give it a quick look as a lot of the trout under the,m have been keeper fish.  Catching reds has been more a case of them finding us than the other way around. Most of the reds we have caught in the bayous or in the river have been oversized fish while the majority of the schooling reds have been in the slot.

You could probably stick with a 3 or 4-inch Usual Suspect and catch fish all day, but we have also been doing well with bone diamond and opening night in the Assassin 4 and 5 inch tails.  We have been fishing our tails both under a cork and rigged on a 1/8th ounce head.  We have also caught both trout and reds on Sooks and Skitterwalks, but I can't say that they have been much better fish.  I hate driving home and cleaning up after dark, but the best bite has easily been in the afternoons on an outgoing tide.