Like it Used to Be

For the past month I’ve had a lot on my mind and the majority of it happens to deal with the health and future of the Sabine fishery. Before I get into that though, I want to mention that I was on the TSFMag website the other day, checking out the archives section. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years that I’ve been writing for the magazine. I couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity as this is something I always dreamed of doing. I can remember as a young kid, reading articles in this magazine and the fishing reports in the Houston Chronicle and being intrigued by it all. I hope that somewhere in the past 10 years I have helped a few anglers that are as curious about the sport as I was and still am.

Whenever I think back about our fishery of say ten or fifteen years ago in comparison to what it is today, I can honestly say that it doesn’t even come close to matching up. I have been fortunate to catch plenty of fish, including a few trophy specimens back in the day. I know my bar is high in my own eyes and possibly even unrealistically high in the eyes of many anglers. However, I know that if you were to talk to some of the old salts of Sabine, anglers from today couldn’t begin to fathom what Sabine Lake looked like during its peak years. I guess for the most part it is all relative to the angler.

When I was just out of high school, my brother and I started spending a lot of time around Sabine lake. We would get off of work with our rods already packed because we knew exactly what we were doing that evening. When it came to catching trout from the bank, we had pretty near the whole area figured out and where we needed to be during the various seasons. We had days that we would stand on the bridge at the Chicken Crossing, AKA Texas Bayou, and would catch our limit of trout within half an hour. The key was the incoming tide and that’s what really turned the bite on. When it was outgoing we knew fishing was pointless so we would grab a crab net and scoop crabs that were on top of the water being washed out from the marsh. Twenty trout and a few dozen crabs made a fine meal for the whole family and more!

From there we knew that the trout moved to deeper water once summer started to set in. We would go to Keith Lake Cut once we got off work and would fish there until about an hour before dark. At that point we would rush over to the Ship Channel, find a good rocky point we could walk out on, and throw topwaters. We would usually leave the fish biting because the mosquitoes would run us off as darkness set in.

We really had that Keith Lake Cut figured out, or at least we liked to believe we did. The outgoing tide was by far the best and the trick was to throw a shallow-diving crankbait. You would cast past the bridge pilings, open the reel and let some line out, and then begin to reel when you lost sight of your lure floating under the bridge. The object was to have that crankbait whip around swim along the bridge pilings and it would get absolutely crushed by big trout. Looking back at it now, the number of 24-inch trout we caught with that method was just silly.

Right around the same time, I had some buddies whose families had houses on the south end of Sabine and nearly all of them had lighted piers. I’m pretty sure I spent more time there during my college years than I did in classrooms. The amount of fishing that my buddies and I did out there was astounding. What was really wild about those times was the incredible number of fish that you would see cruising the lights on any given night. Granted some nights were better than others but for the most part, we always caught fish. Nights that stand out in my memory included seeing a few hundred trout at a given time. Mind you now, those were the ones you were seeing on the surface and doesn’t include the ones below that you never saw. For the most part, we would keep a few but ultimately we would sit out there all night or until the tide changed, landing well over 100 and maybe 200 fish between us.

I tell stories like this because I haven’t had days like that in years. I haven’t even come close to having any days like that in years. It seems like Hurricane Harvey was the breaking point for our lake and it has been a slow recovery since. Most anglers I know, including myself, have been spending our wintertime trophy trout fishing further south or over in Lake Calcasieu. Our population is bouncing back but our bigger breeding stock fish just aren’t there. It also seems like every time it tries to come back, we get more rain and more runoff from the dams up on Rayburn and Toledo. Nearly all of our barrier islands on the north end have washed away. These were helping direct freshwater down the Ship Channel, but instead we now have freshwater flowing in unrestricted and spreading all across the lake.

On top of all of this, there are now plans and a proposal to construct wind turbines on Sabine Lake and the surrounding area. No telling what kind of destruction is going to occur on our reefs with these things being built. Regardless of how you feel about wind turbines, I just want our lake left alone. We are surrounded by industrialization and this is one of the last areas we have in Southeast Texas that is untouched, and corporate greed is trying to ruin it.

Regardless of all of this, Sabine Lake is my home and there is no other place I would rather be. I have traveled and seen some of the most beautiful places in the world and when that plane touches down, I immediately come right back to her. I guess what I can say is that if you want change you have to be involved and your voice has to be heard. Although at the moment the situation at hand might not look the best…but there’s always hope. It’s also comforting to know that with time and the proper management, things can get back to like it used to be.