Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
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COURSE OF HISTORY CHANGED THROUGH SHENANIGANS A lot of things have been going on in Washington but none more significant than the appointment of the 113 Supreme Court judge. If you are 21 years old, the new judge, Neil Gorsuch, will probably be on the court your entire adult life, until the day he retires. His appointment came about by the Senate changing the rules, in a historical move, for the first time they appointed a Supreme Court judge just with a simple majority of 52 votes, not the 60 votes required throughout our...
For the Record Capt. Chuck Uzzle You ever wonder what a 64 pack of Crayola crayons, 31 flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, or bags of assorted candy have in common? The answer is they offer something for everyone because we all don’t have the same taste. If everyone did things exactly like everyone else then life would be ridiculously boring and mundane. It’s choices and options that give each individual the opportunity to succeed and sometimes those options and choices are a little different than what some people con...
It will come as no surprise to his Mom if her fifteen year old son, Bo, balks at the idea of returning home after a week of fishing on Toledo Bend.“He will fish in a mud puddle,” says his Mom, “and he jumped at the chance to spend his entire spring break at his Uncle’s camp.” His initial game plan was to fish 24/7 for sac-au-lait off his Uncle’s pontoon boat, but that all changed Friday evening.“We were still unloading the truck when he grabbed his tackle box and headed for the boat. He idled around to the nearest point...
For The Record Capt. Dickie Colburn In the pre-dawn darkness Saturday morning, Nellie Miller was racing around encouraging anyone launching their bass boat to sign up at the last minute and fish the LCM Project Graduation tournament. While the odds of adding any unsuspecting anglers to the field were not in her favor, she would, surprisingly enough, still be rewarded for her persistence! With the tournament scheduled to kick off in the next few minutes, as far as Miller was co...
For The Record - Capt. Dickie Colburn After all but striking out the previous day in perfect conditions, I was less than excited about the prospect of catching fish the following day.I was even less excited when I got home and saw the miserable weather forecast. A quick courteousy phone call to inform my clients as to how tough it had been and discuss the approaching storms for the following day proved to be a waste of time.“We are coming anyway,” was not the response I was...
For The Record- Capt. Dickie Colburn We had finally caught three or four trout on consecutive casts after struggling most of the morning when 14-year old Jordan Leander’s cork bobbed once or twice before slowly sliding beneath the surface.“That is a weird bite for a trout or red,” I thought as the cork remained in place even as Jordan reeled in the slack line. His hook set resulted in a serious bow in his rod, but it was obvious that he wasn’t making any headway as we continued to drift across the flat. The only time he gain...
For The Record -For The Record- By Capt Dickie Colburn Afternoon after afternoon and weekend after weekend, Michael Vaughan and his seven year old daughter Karsyn climbed into their deer stand and waited for a shot at a special deer.From Day 1 until the final day of youth season and regardless of weather conditions, they repeated that scenario. It was not that she had not had several other opportunities that she patiently passed on nor was it the mounting pressure of having...
For The Record -For The Record- By Capt Dickie Colburn How can you be absolutely sure it’s the first day of the High School baseball season?You climb out of your truck wearing shorts and a wind breaker only to notice that every other parent or grandparent huddled behind the backstop is wearing an insulated jacket or wrapped in a blanket.Only the women were practical enough to bundle up in sleeping bags! I mention this only because I, too, initially had on shorts Saturday morning, but fortunately also had warmer clothes in t...
For The Record- By Capt Dickie Colburn Even before we reached East Pass it was obvious that Mother Nature would unfortunately make our initial decision of the day as to where to start an easy one.The trout bite had been improving daily when Elvin Nelson scheduled his three day vacation, but we had already lost two of them to the wind. We salvaged the first day dinking around in Black’s and Cow bayou for redfish that the low water had forced out of the bordering marshes.That didn’t scratch Elvin’s itch, but he admitted that...
For The Record- By Capt Dickie Colburn As you would probably suspect, I receive a number of texts concerning fishing every week that usually include a picture and a word or two, but seldom if ever the name of the sender. Therefore, if I don’t recognize the person in the picture I am left with little more than a phone number and another fish that I certainly don’t recognize. As a rule, if I don’t recognize the phone number (I can barely remember my own) I briefly admire the fish before deleting the text.A text this past week,...
For The Record- Capt Dickie Colburn I canceled or postponed a ton of trips in 2016 due to the flooding and some pretty tough winds, but I never lost a day due to cold weather.That all changed this past weekend.It was C-O-L-D! There isn’t a fish in Sabine Lake that I want to hunt down when it is 27 degrees at daylight and still in the mid 30’s at lunch.As of today, we are back to having to deal with a howling wind that dictates which shoreline you will fish on any given day, but we can at least feel our fingers now. I wou...
For The Record- Capt Dickie Colburn The wind was blowing a little harder than we would have liked and the rain that was forecast to have already passed was still hanging around when I shut the big engine down.We had already made a pretty big round checking out the effects of all of the runoff and, much to our surprise, the water was dirtier on the west side of the lake than the east. Austin Lejeune pointed in the direction of a small group of terns pecking at the surface and,...
For The Record - Capt. Dickie Colburn With few days remaining in what has been a challenging year for area trout fishermen, Alton Nelson and I slowly cruised down the fog shrouded Intracoastal fully aware that leaving early had no benefit.Because the wind had howled the previous two days, we decided to use up the morning hours by checking water clarity throughout the lake. We cruised at a slow enough speed that I could safely run with my eyes glued on the GPS while he scanned...
For The Record- Capt. Dickie Colburn “Evan, I’m not having fun anymore,” I shouted across a never ending field of icy cold whitecaps.“We’ve only been here fifteen minutes,” he replied.“Give it a chance!” Had I driven a long way to fish, I possibly would have exhibited a little more dogged persistence, but we were less than a ten minute ride from the boat launch right here on Sabine Lake.Evan had driven in from Conroe to fish the day before and decided to stay another day after doing so well.Unfortunately, he talked me into...
SANTA’S VISIT TO THE MEADOWS REVEALS CHRISTMAS GIFTS For The Record- Joe Kazmar The month of November is one I would really like to forget, because I spent it all either in Beaumont Baptist Hospital or rehabbing at The Meadows in Orange. Time was very confusing to me for much of the time. Things began to clear for me when I transferred to The Meadows. Thanksgiving came and went and the next day the huge Christmas tree was put up and decorated in the lobby. As an added surprise Santa made a visit to the patients and even p...
For The Record- By Capt. Dickie Colburn Determined not to waste the entire day due to a mid-day meeting, I decided to make a conscious effort to stream line a burgeoning collection of soft plastic lures stowed away in my boat.I try to do this once a year and it usually takes place when the winter trout bite kicks off as I will be throwing only three baits, a Corky Fat Boy, Maniac Mullet or Softdine XL most of the time. The largest of Sabine Lake’s big trout population will readily track down one of these slow moving mullet i...
For The Record- By Capt. Dickie Colburn We were still treading water Monday following a month’s worth of rain in a single weekend. Boats would have been more appropriate than floats had they not postponed Friday night’s Christmas parade. When it comes to weather, we seem to never get a moderate change in conditions.It is either so hot and dry that a weed won’t grow or flooded streets and ditches overnight.We badly needed about a third of all of this rain for parched yards, but the other two thirds is quickly running off i...
For The Record- Capt. Dickie Colburn At that exact moment there was every indication that while Jack Valence and his son, Daryl and I may not be anchored in a great flounder spot, we were at the very least anchored in a popular one! I hadn’t fished for flounder with mud minnows since Foret’s Tackle closed, but they brought some with them and I wasn’t on a bite that held any more promise. The anchor rope was no sooner stretched tight than Daryl requested the net and his Dad s...
Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record “We had a really good year two years ago fishing right here around the camp with a Catch 2000 and a MirrOdine when no one else could make the school bass bite,” said Warren Evans.“I think the one with the silver sides and green back worked the best, but we didn’t experiment much with other colors after it worked so well!” “The 2000 fishes much like the old Near Nuthins which you can’t find anymore,” added his fishing buddy, Len Peavey.“You...
IT CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record Unfortunately, the longer I fish the longer my “It can’t get any worse than this...” list grows.Easily one of the most annoying and potentially dangerous mishaps involves wrapping a ghost crab trap around your prop.Colder weather only magnifies the problem as it invariably requires climbing out of the boat to solve the problem. A ghost trap, by frustrated angler definition, is one of the countless wire traps lying on the bottom of the lake with no visible float...
Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record Larry Breaux and a friend were cinching down the four wheeler in the bed of his truck when I first spotted them in the far corner of the high school parking lot.It was still an hour before kickoff and while the rest of the family had already made their way into the stadium, Larry was checking his list one more time. “I have a serious love-hate relationship with this time of the year,” said Breaux.“There just isn’t enough time!”Sound familiar? “Connie and I went to the JV game last night,...
Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record The S.A.L.T. Club will host their 3^rd annual “KIDS” tournament on October 1st and now that you know about it, there is no good reason for not getting there with your youngster.In fact, the only reason that it has not grown faster than it has over the past two years is that it somehow slips by under the radar. While the convenience factor for the parents and grandparents alone makes this a “can’t miss” event, it’s the grand prize that is the icing on the cake.Every youngster between the...
Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record At some point, virtually every day, I check out the water in the river and bayous at several locations around the area even when I have no intention of fishing.Water clarity, tide movement and the effect of a big wind from any direction all figure into planning my next fishing trip. The most enjoyable part of that daily milk run, however, is visiting with the folks that frequent those same spots hoping to catch a few fish.There is nothing sophisticated about their approach and they are not...
First redfish ever was a good one! Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record Two short weeks ago I was convinced that we had turned the corner as far as the “trout catching” was concerned on Sabine lake.A mini-drought of sorts that had parched local lawns had also yielded a much clearer lake with higher salinity levels. Catching trout was simply a matter of locating them and locating them was simply a matter of finding a mixed bag of terns and gulls riding herd on schools of sha...
Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record The Triangle Tailchasers hosted their year-end championship event this past Saturday and had it been a horse race rather than a fishing tournament, the winning ticket would not have earned you much at the windows.The “odds-on” favorites once again showed why they were the “odds-on” favorites. In spite of the fact that there are some very skilled teams that participate in this local redfish circuit throughout the year, the Vaughans have been all but unbeatable from start to finish. Michael a...
