Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Sorted by date Results 51 - 73 of 73
My thoughts were somewhere between wrestling the remaining two broken 4X4 fence posts out of the ground in the back yard and purchasing tickets for Friday’s game when my slow retrieve came to an abrupt halt. The only question as I reeled down to set the hook was, “What kind of fish will this be?” When the tug of war ended I released another undersized red and replaced the badly mangled Gulp shrimp with a four inch Lil’ John.Having already caught fifteen to twenty fish on that same Lil’ John, I had switched in hopes of catchi...
LSCO, area sponsors and everyone associated with the college’s bass fishing team have to be excited about the performance of two of their own in last weekend’s Bassmaster National Collegiate Championship held in Florida! Brett Fregia and Jack Tindel qualified for the prestigious event earlier in the year and left Orange last week convinced that they could hold their own with the best college anglers in the nation. When all was said and done, they had done far better than simpl...
Congratulations to Nellie Stephens Miller and her LCM high school bass fishing team on their performance in last weekend’s National High School championship on Kentucky Lake. While the fishing conditions could not have been more foreign to a group of southeast Texas high school fishermen, the Bears proved to be quick learners. The team of Dylan Istre and Mckee Ridgaway managed to fish their way through the massive field of 250 qualifiers from all over the country and earn the opportunity to fish championship Saturday with onl...
Larry Sellers and his wife, Loraine, were drifting a short stretch of Louisiana shoreline and was obvious that Larry was more than a little frustrated as he closed the distance between our boats on his troll motor. “It isn’t unusual for me to not catch fish, but there is no doubt that they are here and we can’t get a bite! I was a little frustrated as well as I was steadily catching trout, but the majority of them were too small to keep.“I don’t even want to know what y’all are using,” I replied, “but if you just want to ge...
If you were one of the few that stayed home and rode out Laura, you probably considered Hurricane Delta to be little more than a pre-game warm-up. That is not to say that it wasn’t a little scary at times, but the loss of power proved to be the biggest inconvenience for folks still in the process of putting things back together. Delta’s wind certainly blew hard enough to peel blue tarps off a number of roofs, but Laura had already eliminated an incredible number of trees and wooden fences all over Orange. The following mor...
What a difference a week can make. “Last Monday I was hoping I could catch a few decent bass in the bayou or maybe a redfish or two in Coffee Ground Cove,” said Jarrod James, “and now its hard to choose between Sabine Lake and Toledo Bend!” He and his wife, Carley, decided on Toledo Bend and caught fifty white perch and a pile of two to five pound bass in two days.They apparently made the right decision. Jason said they caught white perch as quickly as they could lower a black...
Five years ago, the picture of Jay and Donnie Williams” recent catch would not have warranted a second look, but that was five years ago and things have changed! Immediately following Monday’s brief downpour, the cousins decide to at least give it a try rather than return home without even launching the boat. “It was Donnie’s idea to go ahead and fish and I am glad we did,” said Jay. “I was still tying on a topwater when we rounded the corner at Blue Buck Point and saw three different schools of reds on the surface. ”The fish...
It’s Tuesday morning and you would be hard pressed to find a single Orange County resident that isn’t at least a little concerned as to what Beta will do before moving on.Not after having dealt with Harvey! Only three weeks ago, a client in the Houston area called to see if our home had survived Laura and what he could do to help.I made the same offer to him this morning only to learn that there home was already flooded and they were holding up with their kids in Mon...
I was not surprised by the pods of dead shad we saw floating in both Cow and Adams Bayou following Hurricane Laura, but two texts and a short video I received regarding the dead fish in the Nibletts Bluff-West Bluff area were very concerning. Several area bass fishermen said the water in the river both smelled and looked bad the week after the storm, but none of them reported seeing anymore dead fish.Something that depletes the oxygen content like flooded dead grass or leaves is most often the culprit, but there are other...
What a week!Depending on where you live in the Orange area, Laura was rated somewhere between a minor inconvenience and a disaster.Having lost part of the roof, two bedrooms, a bathroom and the garage, it has been a tad more than an inconvenience for us thus far. Without sounding too Pollyanna, it could have been far worse as we narrowly averted a direct hit.I have friends in Creole, Cameron, Hackberry, Sulphur and Lake Charles that lost their entire residences. As far as the...
“The line at the boat launch was even longer than expected and Paul and I just pulled over on the side and started getting things in order so that we wouldn’t hold anyone up,”said Tim Rameriz.“It was a Saturday morning and a lot of people had the same idea!” Tim is sixty-nine years old and still works in a downtown office in Houston five days a week.I mention that because it played a role in what would soon result in an aborted fishing trip.By the time they had rigged up...
“I am hoping they let the kids back in school and at least a few of these folks have to go home,” said Johnny Hughes.The Toledo Bend resident added, “I built my first camp up here in 1970 and I cannot ever recall the lake being this crowded all summer long.” After acknowledging the possibility that most of those people are simply trying to avoid Covid 19, he relented and added, “My neighbors’ camps and docks are in a lot better shape now!” At the age of 78, you would think the retired pipe fitter would no longer chase...
“Either we are fishing in the wrong place or we are the only people on the lake,” said Ray Bayliss on a very hot afternoon last week.I feared when it rained earlier in the day that it would at least feel hotter than usual after it stopped due to the humidity and the fact that the thermometer was hovering around the 93 degree mark. With the light wind I also assumed that the boat ramp would be packed with local fishermen hoping to squeeze in a few hours of thinking about som...
Larry Roman held up a hand-sized goggle eye for me to admire before slipping it in his livewell.“If I didn’t know better I would think we were just fishing a four-inch piece of worm on a sixteenth ounce jig,” he announced in a sarcastic tone. The basis of his tongue-in-cheek comment was that we were fishing what is now officially termed a Ned rig and we were fishing it in fresh water.More precisely, the water would probably lean more toward brackish than fresh depending on ru...
I can't imagine that we will see another 12.4-pound bass caught this summer, but Toledo Bend did give up at least two more double digit fish this past week.Both fish were caught in the afternoon hours. Jason Simms' lunker hit a Carolina rigged watermelon-red flake Centipede in twenty-six feet of water and Carol Duplantis duped his prize with a deep diving crankbait in fourteen feet of water.Jason's fish weighed 10.02 pounds and Carol's bass weighed 10.42 pounds. You certainly...
I don’t know that the weather can get much more unbearable as far as the heat is concerned, but local anglers appear to be handling it quite well! Even on the saltwater side and Lord know there isn’t much shade at the jetties or middle of Sabine Lake, local anglers have fared well on the tournament scene.Last weekend Eddie Roberts and Brian Quebedeaux teamed up to finish fourth in the Showtime on Sabine tournament which is one of the scheduled events on the popular Elite Red...
It seems like every time I have convinced myself that we have turned the corner on Covid-19, another individual I know tests positive and it becomes a little more real.If you can safely make it to the water, there is probably no safer place to be than fishing in the middle of the lake! Sooo…….the most viable preventative options until a vaccine is developed is to wear a mask and go fishing.I’ll bet that is not a reason you ever thought you would use to escape to your favor...
One day this past week we caught some very solid trout on one specific lure and they would not hit anything else.That has seldom if ever been my experience when trying to dupe saltwater fish with a piece of plastic. When I decided to switch gears and guide on Sabine Lake rather than Toledo Bend, I foolishly believed that my investment in everything from boat to tackle would be far less.In looking back to 1982, that assumption was reasonably accurate at the time. I would no...
While it seems as though some anglers consistently catch fish every time they go fishing……in reality it just doesn’t work that way.More especially, when you are talking about bass fishing! A recreational saltwater fishermen just looking for a bite that isn’t species specific has a much better chance of catching something.The fact that when all else fails he can turn to live or frozen bait as an option greatly enhances his chances of some level of success. I mention this on...
Thirty-two boats fished a Saturday edition of the weekly Sabine River Shootout and posted some very solid numbers in spite of the weekend fishing pressure.Seventeen teams finished the day with a reason to weigh in and fourteen of their fish topped the three pound mark! Brent and Chad Kemp enjoyed the day about ten ounces more than the second place team of Gavin Deshotel and Dagan Bradshaw.The Kemps weighed 16.46-pounds while the second place team finished the outing with a...
I didn’t know the answer to his question, but it said a lot about the status of the crappie fishing on both Toledo Bend and Rayburn right now.“His question was, “How many white perch fillets can I legally have in my freezer at one time?” This particular angler elected to quarantine for the past month and a half at his camp on Toledo Bend and has crappie fished all but two of those days.“I initially gave them to neighbors and relatives,” he said, “but you can only give so...
While I certainly won't mention any names as they don't need some fool publishing a list of temporarily unoccupied residences, it is amazing the number of folks that are now spending more time at their lake homes than their permanent residences. They just won't come home and I don't blame them! I know of one couple that has spent more time at their camp on T-Bend over the past two months than they did in the past ten years.Robert and Beverly Connor left home as well, but took...
"Is today Saturday," I asked Todd Dore as we slowed to an idle in the smaller waves splashing up against the North Levee wall. "What kind of a question is that," he snapped into the wind."Every day is Saturday right now isn't it?" The reason I even asked was due to the number of trucks and anglers lining the wall. It looked like the old days at Rollover on a weekend morning. We immediately chose not to make the first cast and entertained ourselves by idling the entire length...
