Back from the Brink

It’s no secret that everybody loves an underdog, everybody loves to see the comeback story with the fairy tale ending. I can honestly say that it’s been both painful and exciting to have ridden the rollercoaster we call Sabine Lake for the past 5-plus years; and at the moment it appears that things more closely resemble normal than they have in quite some time. Like a punch drunk prizefighter, our little mud-hole of an estuary on the upper coast has managed to get up off the canvas after suffering several heavy blows that seemed certain to knock it out for good. Our “liquid Rocky” has shaken off the effects of floods and freezes only to start returning to form once again. Now don’t get me wrong, Sabine has a long way to go to get back to the gem she once was, but she is certainly headed in the right direction.

In the mid-to-late 90s Sabine Lake went through a type of renaissance, an enlightenment if you will. The lower coast had long been the Mecca for big trout and eventually both anglers and techniques from that part of the state made their way to Sabine and that really was the start of her glory days. The late 90s and early 2000s were insanely good fishing for trophy trout on Sabine, in fact the lake record of 11 pounds and 12 ounces was caught by Dr. Kelly Rising in March of 1999. Nobody had ever heard of a double-digit trout coming from Sabine and it was widely acknowledged that if you wanted a fish of that caliber you needed to go south towards Baffin or the Laguna Madre until everything finally fell into place. Wade fishing for trophy trout became a common technique and the next thing we knew was that there were some really big fish being caught nearly every day.

The big trout epidemic did nothing but get better as the trend crossed the border into Louisiana, and just kept getting better. The mid 2000s on Calcasieu were epic, almost ridiculous. I know I have told many people on lots of occasions that during that time if you went to Calcasieu and did not catch a 6-pound trout it was a bad trip, and I still stand by that statement. Both Sabine and Calcasieu were not only spitting out trophy fish they were incredibly good for overall quality fish. For many years we enjoyed catching 18- to 22-inch trout under birds with an occasional school from time to time that was full of nothing but 3- to 4-pounders. I actually had two clients catch 8-pounders while fishing under the birds on Calcasieu. It was that wild.

Fast forward ten years or so and the entire program was flipped on its head as several hurricanes produced massive flooding. Toledo Bend consistently had historic high water levels that provided unprecedented runoff, and a couple of very bad freezes spelled nothing but trouble for our area. The last big punch to the gut was a flood during a freeze. Talk about taking it on the chin!

The most widely accepted theory was that most of the fish in the estuary had moved to deep water to escape the cold temps and were basically washed out of the area by the flooding. It wasn’t long after that chain of events that you couldn’t buy a trout or redfish anywhere; it was like nothing anyone had ever seen. Sabine seemed like a wasteland and Calcasieu was not much better. If you go and check some of the historical tournament results from the last five years the winning weights would blow you away compared to other years. To say things were dismal would be a huge understatement.

As trout fishermen were in denial, a bright spot appeared two years ago as it seemed the redfish population took off overnight; they just somehow appeared and saved the day for many anglers. Not long after that was a glimmer of hope, starting on Calcasieu, as herds of undersized trout invaded the lake. At times you may actually have to catch a hundred or more fish to find five keepers. Even though all those fish were small they were very healthy and that was a cause for optimism. Soon after the resurgence on Calcasieu those very same small trout began to show up much more frequently on Sabine, and we quietly held our breath, prayed that it was a sign of things to come.

2022 has been the best year we have had since Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, and that’s not really saying a lot compared to ten years or so ago. Sabine still has a lot of catching up to do in order to reach a more “normal” state that we are accustomed to. Trust me, I am not complaining at all and will take anything at this point that appears to be progress. The last few months have been much more like normal in the sense that we have been able to catch fish using patterns that we are accustomed to fishing at this time of the year. The schooling action has been very solid all over the lake but the majority of the fish are still on the short side. There have been some solid fish in these schools but the name of the game is going through numbers in order to find keeper-sized specimens.

Easily the biggest star of this past fall has been the emergence of some absolute stud redfish, the kind that test both your drag and stamina. I have caught more 40-inch redfish this fall than I have in the last five years combined. It’s amazing.

These big redfish are shadowing the schools of little specks and sand trout searching for a meal, and often finding one. On several occasions while reeling in a small trout that ate a soft plastic we have had redfish engulf the trout and head for Mexico until they spit it out. These big fish are prowling everywhere from under the birds to the deeper breaks in the channels – you just never know where they will show up. I caught a 25-pound redfish recently that gave my Laguna spinning rod all it wanted, and then some. I was amazed at both how strong that fish was as well as how well that light action rod handled the fight.

Going forward I will be cautiously optimistic at what the future holds for us on both Sabine and Calcasieu. Hopefully we won’t endure another severe freeze and all those short trout will grow a couple of inches and we can stay on the road to recovery. I can honestly say right now I feel much better about the long term health of the lake compared to this time last year and that is all one can hope for.

I hope each and every one of you enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and an even better New Year.