Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Sorted by date Results 176 - 200 of 270
“Howdy Tex” was a common greeting from other anglers as Bink Grimes and I strode down the sidewalk towards our waiting boat. “I wonder how they know we’re from Texas” I thought to myself, then I looked down at my rods and it hit me as gazed at the fist full of baitcasters. We were in Florida and baitcasters are a dead giveaway that you are from the Lone Star State, down in the Sunshine State spinning tackle rules the angling world. Now before you go get in a fired up huff and quit reading this article because you think it...
Capt. Dickie Colburn - For The Record High school bass fishing may well be the fastest growing team sport in southeast Texas and I have been amazed at the winning weights posted in several of these tournaments.The fact that they have very little time to pre-fish due to minor obligations like going to class and in many cases, even participating in other sports, makes those numbers even more impressive. My only concern thus far with the rapid growth of the sport is the equally rapid growing number of youngsters that cannot...
Local Fishing with Capt. Dickie Colburn Dickie Colburn - For The Record The talk in local tackle shops and fishing department aisles is more about bass fishing on the river than anything going on in Sabine Lake and for good reason. Backwater areas off the river and bayous continue to clear up and not only are local bass fishermen catching better numbers, but larger bass as well. After returning from a tough morning of looking for trout in the lake last week, I ran up the river just to check out the water clarity.I ran only as...
Capt. Dickie Colburn - For The Record If you take folks fishing long enough you will witness any number of things that you would never even imagine happening and something that took place last week ranks well up on that list! I was fishing a middle aged couple, as if age made any difference, and we were catching well enough considering the conditions.The wind was howling out of the southwest and we were catching a redfish or two on virtually every high speed drift across the...
Staying warm equals more catching! Captain Dickie Colburn - For The Record After carefully shuffling their way across the frost covered dock, my clients hunkered down behind the leaning post in an effort to avoid the dreaded chill of the upcoming frigid boat ride.When I eased under the Adams Bayou Bridge the surface temperature in the bayou was a balmy fifty-one degrees, but we were about to deal with the chill factor of a 15 mile per hour northwest wind in 35 degree weather!...
The Wilkes had their way with the redfish last week. Dickie Colburn - For The Record When I saw Jim Morrissey’s number pop up on my phone I initially thought that he had yet another stat to report concerning last weekend’s Tailchaser Open Trout Tournament. If it weren’t for Jim, the results of virtually every redfish or trout tournament held on Sabine would never get shared with anyone that wasn’t on hand for the weigh-in. He does a fantastic job of not only updating live weig...
Redfish continue to provide most consistent bite. Dickie Colburn - For The Record Seldom if ever do I make the short walk from the front doors of the H.E.B. on 16th street to my truck without running into someone that wants to talk about the local fishing. I don’t know if that’s because more fishermen shop H.E.B. or simply because my grocery shopping consists of picking up only two or three items nearly every day. Either way, it is amazing how much you can learn about fishing...
Capt. Dickie Colburn For The Record The catching had been far too good to take a chance on the weatherman blowing a forecast once again for us to cancel the trip. His educated guess was calling for 20 to 25 mile per hour south winds which would preclude the option of fishing the open lake, but Jason and Delaney were determined to give it a try. Unfortunately, the weather man did in fact miss the forecast and as usual it was on the low side. By the time I eased out of East...
Captain Dickie Colburn - For The Record “This isn’t what I wanted to do,” snapped Wayne Hollier while glaring at me with an incredulous look on his face. At that moment he was huffing, puffing and struggling to get even one leg into the stocking waders. Having seen him only twice in the past thirty years, I had taken no chances and thrown a pair of large and x-large waders in the rod locker. It proved to be a good decision as even the largest pair provided a marginal fit at best. While he is now, by his own admission, appro...
Joe Kazmar - For The Record CHRISTMAS COLUMN NOTATES 50TH YEAR It’s hard to believe I’ve been writing this Christmas column for 50 years and have loved every minute of it. I hope you readers have enjoyed reading these sometimes clever and sometime humorous gifts to sports celebrities and local folks half as much as I have enjoyed creating them over the years. Usually if your name shows up with some sort of facetious present, it’s only because I like you. Some sports celebrities are not nearly that lucky. This year we will...
Capt. Dickie Colburn - For The Record Okay, Mom……how many times since throwing away the last of the Thanksgiving turkey, have you asked Santa’s number one helper what he wanted for Christmas? The answer is always that same less than helpful, “I don’t need anything.” While that answer is not altogether truthful, more especially if you have a pot of money remaining after taking care of everyone from the kids to second cousins, it is at least honest and doesn’t necessitate a...
Capt. Dickie Colburn - For The Record Okay, Mom……how many times since throwing away the last of the Thanksgiving turkey, have you asked Santa’s number one helper what he wanted for Christmas? The answer is always that same less than helpful, “I don’t need anything.” While that answer is not altogether truthful, more especially if you have a pot of money remaining after taking care of everyone from the kids to second cousins, it is at least honest and doesn’t necessitate a...
Capt. Belcher recently took advantage of Mother Nature's hospitality Capt. Dickie Colburn - For The Record The fisherman-friendly weather that Mother Nature served up this past week did not atone for the previous six months of challenging wind and rain she delivered on a daily basis, but it still enabled us to fish different areas and patterns that we have been unable to exploit for quite awhile. As a matter of fact, I enjoyed leaving the boat launch conflicted as to where I...
Nice way to spend a winter day! Captain Dickie Colburn - For The Record “Well…did y’all have a good day?” asked Gene Locke while helping tie off my bow rope back at the dock.Without hesitation, both clients nodded their heads in a positive direction and continued unloading their waders, rods and a lot of stuff they could have left at home. By the time they had dried off and loaded their gear in their truck I was cleaning the last of the eight trout and one redfish that we...
RAT-L-TRAPS COVER ALL THE BASES Over the years I have thrown everything from unweighted tails to Corkies under a popping cork when wade fishing, but until this past week I had never tied on a Rat-L-Trap when stalking big trout.Not that it worked because we never caught the first trout with one, but my two clients caught redfish until Carter Sensat finally cried, “Uncle.” I still haven’t personally caught the first fish on a Trap while wading, but only because I stayed with a Corky Fat Boy the entire time.The game changed when...
Capt. Dickie Colburn - For The Record Our confidence level was waning and I was more in tune with a small group of teal bucking a stiff southeast wind than I was with the black-chartreuse She Dog attached to the end of my line.Over the past hour we hadn’t caught the first fish and I could only see the noisy topwater between every other whitecap anyway when the jolt of a solid strike snapped the wind-blown slack out of my line. The 20-pound braid sliced through the tops of the white caps as the fish raced parallel to the s...
Dickie Colburn - For The Record Every time I find myself even remotely encouraged by decent weather conditions that increase the odds of locating and catching fish on Sabine Lake we are immediately swamped with a month’s worth of rain in a single day.The deluge that parked over southeast Texas this past weekend, while not as bad as predicted, will at least slow down the red hot bite we enjoyed the week before. Amazingly enough, due in part to huge incoming tides generated by the storm that roared across the Gulf the week b...
Water was high even before weekend downpour! Captain Dickie Colburn - For The Record Count me as one of that handful of local fishermen foolishness enough to think that we had survived the worst weather 2015 had to offer and were finally looking at closing out the year with two great months of fishing.There was every reason to entertain that thought going into this past weekend as the bite had improved all week long in spite of incoming tides that pushed water over the docks...
Captain Dickie Colburn - For The Record Prior to last Monday afternoon I was reasonably certain that over the years I had seen just about everything that could possibly go wrong at a boat ramp do just that.I have seen panic stricken girl friends and wives weep unashamedly while in the midst of jack knifing the boat trailer time and again while their soon to be ex-boyfriends or husbands cussed them from behind the bass boat console. I once saw a veteran angler back truck, trailer and boat into the lake and much to everyone’s s...
Dickie Colburn - For The Record It is rare indeed when most Plan B’s save a trip for me in the face of 20 mile per hour winds or for that matter, simply when the fish suddenly abandon a pattern that has been very good for several days. I have always scouted enough water to have a few viable back-up plans and up until this past Monday, believed that I had exploited most every possibility. It didn’t take the wind long to crank up Monday morning and the lake was white capping before local anglers had even netted their shad and...
Dickie Colburn - For The Record “Go figure,” said Jamie Diggs as he finished the last of his coffee while staring at the black water in the bayou lapping against the top of the dock.“We have had a solid week of north winds strong enough to keep us out of the open lake along with a good outgoing tide and this water still hasn’t dropped an inch!” His pre-dawn assessment was right on the money and it has not made figuring out the big trout any easier in spite of the user-friendly conditions.Unlike the water soaked spring an...
Dickie Colburn - For The Record Cleve Barrett bit his leader off just ahead of the knot on his Usual Suspect and disgustedly bounced the three-inch Swim bait off the floor of the boat.“That’s what I hate about these dang things,” he barked while already digging another one out of the package on the console. Still in the midst of his mini-tirade, he lobbed his new Swim Bait in the direction of the shad exploding out of the water and continued, “This bait has a piece of foil already sticking out of the side of the body, s...
New Not Necessarily Better Dickie Colburn - For The Record “You don’t throw your tube jig with the little piece of shrimp stuffed inside anymore?,” asked Hilton Kyle as we picked apart the flooded grass on the Louisiana shoreline with three inch swim baits and a GULP shrimp threaded on an eighth ounce jig head.The redfish bite had been slow to materialize earlier that morning and we were making due with an average flounder bite at best. “I don’t even target flounder anymore,” I replied, “so that bait is no longer a part...
Dickie Colburn - For The Record I certainly hope that the day I die someone can say, “Wow….I just saw him out on the water yesterday! ”That was pretty much my surprised response when Russell Bottley called to tell me that James Chargois had died earlier that morning. The following morning, rather than turn right in the Intracoastal and head out to the lake with clients, I took a left and ran a short distance up the river. I stopped on a point that Charg (pronounced Shag short for Chargois) showed me years ago, threw three scr...
Local Fishing - Capt. Dickie Colburn There are those that would write it off as simply a coincidence, but Trey Smith called me last week and reminded me that the tough fishing in the river and Sabine Lake was almost over.“The bite turns around every year, regardless of conditions, as soon as the OCARC tournament is in the books.” Fortunately, for the 275 fishermen that fished the event last weekend, the bite actually turned around the day before the tournament.We were ble...
