Sabine Scene: December 2017

Gene Locke launched a long looping cast that sent his chrome She Dog dead into the middle of nowhere. Neither the direction nor the non-specific landing spot was of any consequence. While peeling off a couple of remaining loops on the spool that he hadn’t seen in far too long, he paused to assess our prospects of a successful fishing trip.

“This is already a great day,” he beamed. “No stench of duct-taped refrigerators full of rotten food, no sheetrock dust and no waiting in line hoping to negotiate with an irritable insurance adjuster.” While I hope that you can’t relate to any of that, his assessment sets a higher standard for what constitutes a successful day on the water than you may think!

Ever since Hurricane Harvey sloshed across our area, we have been blessed with unseasonably dry and cooler weather that aided not only in reconstruction work, but catching fish as well. Because so many locals are displaced or rebuilding, the fishing pressure has been exceptionally light, but the catching has steadily improved.

The most recent norther blew some of the water out, but the marshes are still flooded and the shrimp have yet to make any substantial move. The redfish carried us for five weeks and the flooded grass along the shoreline was a great place to start your trip every morning. An occasional flounder getting an early start on the annual migration made for a mixed bag, with only keeper trout nowhere to be found.

Enter the unexpected arrival of a dash of colder than usual weather and every bite stepped it up a notch. Within the first week, the reds were chasing bait in the open lake again, the flounder were moving out in herds and a higher percentage of the trout working under the pelicans and gulls were keeper fish.

If you are looking to do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant day on the water with no intention of targeting any specific species, I would recommend tying on one of three lures. Smaller is better if you want to include flounder, thus a four-inch tail is more productive than the longer version. A Gulp! Swimming Mullet rigged on an eighth-ounce leadhead will catch anything!

My second choice would be a three-inch Usual Suspect swimbait. It is not only a lure that requires no prior experience to make work, but also casts exceptionally well. I don’t think it comes in any color that won’t catch fish, but silver shiner, morning glory and space guppy are very reliable on Sabine.

My third choice, these choices are all interchangeable, would be a four-inch tail or Gulp! fished under a popping cork. This is one rig that will fish itself, provided you can cast just a little. The cork makes it a great rig to hunt fish with and don’t think that flounder won’t hit it as well!

While the salinity levels are still below average, trout up to five-pounds have finally decided to abandon the deeper water long enough to gorge themselves on the shallow flats. This bite has cranked up even earlier than usual and the waders are doing the best job of exploiting it.

We are catching these fish on every bait in the box once we locate them. She Dogs, Spooks, Catch-5s and five-inch Assassins rigged on sixteenth-ounce heads have all worked well. While it will get even stronger with more cold weather, the Corky family is already producing as well. The smaller Soft-dine has worked a little better than the Fat Boy.

The key to catching better numbers of these shallow trout is staying put. That is the reason the waders are doing far better than the boaters, for the most part. They are fishing quieter and waiting out the bite. Drift fishermen can compensate by burying their Talon or Power Pole and pounding small areas before moving a few yards.

Fishermen are part of an extended family and that was never more evident than dealing with the aftermath of Harvey. The number of emails and phone calls that flooded in not only from clients, but readers of this magazine as well, was incredible. Fishermen that I will never even meet offered everything from a place to stay, to coming in and helping with the clean-up. Not surprisingly, the editor of this magazine, Everett Johnson, was one of the first to call.