Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
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We got more than the shark did for a change! RECORD PHOTO: Dickie Colburn You will just have to excuse local bass fishermen for hoping for yet another down pour not unlike the system that parked on top of us last Friday.The flooding conditions, depending on where you reside in Orange County, will make it even tougher on the trout fishermen for a few days, but the bass apparently found it very much to their liking! Even before receiving several emails and phone calls from...
EASTER’S GONE, IT’S BACK TO THE COAL MINE What a great Easter Sunday. We had perfect weather for outdoor gatherings. Everyone I ran into Sunday was in a good frame of mind and thankful for the lovely day the Lord sent. Personally, I was again blessed with a nice Easter basket and my friend Marlene came through with another large, chocolate rabbit that will last the year. She also gave me something I’d never seen before, white Peeps with red eyes and green bowties. I’m told Peeps are not just yellow anymore. *****The Boston...
I don’t know that it is possible to have any better sponsors than I have in the fishing business, but I do not fish or promote any lures or tackle that I can’t rely on every day simply because it is free.I am going to fish the lure that works the best for me and my clients regardless of the brand name. Ninety-nine percent of the time it is a specific color that sends me scrambling for something different as I pretty much have all of the bases covered as far as style and len...
Dickie Colburn 8:47 AM (2 hours ago) to Record NEVER TAKE WARM FOR GRANTED It wasn’t until I leaned back on my 6”5” Laguna in a clumsy response to a jolting strike that all but dislodged the rod from my hands that I realized that I could no longer feel my fingers.I held on tightly as the line peeled off the reel, but I couldn’t feel the knobs on the handle and it was “Red fish 1-Dickie 0” for the first few minutes of the tug-of-war. I couldn’t tell if my clients were amazed or amused as they stood motionless in the back of t...
While walking through the Mall last week waiting for wife Susan to buy something that I wasn’t supposed to see, I sat down at the nice rest area to wait a bit more comfortably. I spotted Santa visiting with the excited children who were blurting out the names of different toys and games a mile-a-minute. He was listening to every word they said. My thoughts were a mile away when Santa sauntered up to the bench where I was sitting a plopped down, like he needed a break. ...
Jalen Simar and his 14 year old son, Carlton, shared a Thanksgiving they won’t soon forget. They had been on their deer stand early Friday morning less than an hour when they heard a shot echo through the woods.“We never even saw a squirrel and gave it up just before noon,” said Jalen. “We were sitting on the tailgate eating a leftover turkey sandwich when Carly’s two cousins drove up with a big buck that they all said Carly had seen twice this year, but could never get an op...
The calendar indicates that this is November, but not unlike the past ten months of 2013, the anticipated fall weather is yet to arrive. One day we keep our Frogg Toggs on all day long to ward off a bone chilling wind and the very next day we leave the dock in shorts under overcast skies. Too much wind most every day has been the only thing you can take to the bank! Even more perplexing has been the high water levels that tend to scatter the fish in the open lake and hold...
At some point on virtually every fishing trip a client will invariably ask, “How many days a week do you fish?” If that question is asked on the second day of a two day booking, it is usually because everything but the catching part is less fun than it was the day before. Not a whole lot of folks spend eight hours on the water two days in a row and their body parts tend to balk the second day. I would be very comfortable with four days a week, but unfortunately it never wor...
We have had to deal with a little more rain lately, but it’s the cooler weather that has us digging for our Frog Toggs every morning. More often than not, I find myself wearing the bibbed bottoms even when I don’t wear the jacket. The thinner Classic suits work well enough, but the slightly thicker Toad Skinz material is warm even when you are wearing only shorts underneath. The wind has made things a little uncomfortable lately, especially a northeast wind, but it has...
Ironically enough, relief came in the form of a driving rain that hammered away at our Frogg Toggs and kept the automatic bilge pump running like someone had hit the manual switch. As miserable as that scenario may sound to anyone less passionate about fishing, it was far better than fighting the swarms of mosquitoes that greeted us at daylight. Left to kill only those that had managed to find any opening in our rain jackets, we were wetter, but confident that we would...
Since purchasing the Houston Astros two summers ago, new owner Jim Crane realizes that right now he is among the least popular sports figures around the city of Houston. “People like to win—and certainly I like to win—and we’re not comfortable where we’re at,” Crane said last week in a radio interview by ESPN. “Hopefully, people will turn around and come in our direction, but that’s gonna come when we start winning more ballgames than we’re losing,” Crane continued. “We know that, and that’s what we’re working for. “We...
8 YEARS AND COUNTING Welcome to our 53rd anniversary edition. That’s a longtime for a locally owned publication to make available a free newspaper to everyone who wants one. Our newspaper is delivered to homes on every street, on every block in our trade area, in addition to over 4,000 papers in stores and drop locations in our area. The paper is also made available in the Deweyville, Vinton and Mauriceville, etc. areas. In putting this issue together what surprised us the most is how many local independent businesses and p...
Drinking that first cup of coffee in front of the television at 7:00 in the morning is not the way most folks start their Sundays around here, but I feel certain that it was the norm for lots of Orange County residents this past weekend. ESPN 2 aired last week’s Bassmaster Elite Sabine River Challenge and I thought they did a fantastic job of showing the rest of the viewing world what we have known for a long time…..Orange has far more to offer visitors than its world cla...
HOLY WEEK-- SPECIAL TIME FOR CHRISTIANS Well, it’s come on Easter week. Come Sunday, 40 days of Lent would have flown by, Christy will be able to eat candy again and everyone else who gave up something for Lent will be able to indulge again. The annual Easter cold snap came in a few days early but the wind will move to the south Thursday, after that, with the full moon arriving, it will be just the right time to get a garden planted. If you are a Catholic, you’ll have to wait until Saturday to plant. Old time Catholics don...
Anyone that resides in the Orange area could have immediately told you there was a helluva crowd in attendance at the Bassmaster Elite weigh-ins both Saturday and Sunday afternoon well before they neared the launch site. I have never seen trucks and cars wedged into every available space from Green avenue all the way to Bluebird fish camp in my life! The crowds the first two days of the event had already been praised by the pros, but they easily doubled in size on day three...
“First in line”, “Early bird catches the worm”, “second place is the first loser” and so on, all phrases that conjure up the idea that we have to be in a hurry. Fishing too fast is a common problem that many anglers have, especially when the fish tend to gather up and school in big bunches. Saltwater anglers who chase schooling fish along with freshwater fishermen who also key in on flocks of birds over hungry groups of stripers, hybrids, and whites are perhaps the worst. The frenzied activity puts everyone on the boat in...
WELCOME TO THE NEW YEAR Well, we made it through another year and 2013 blew in dropping over two inches of rain. In the past year we lost a lot of friends, that’s the sad part, and the New Year will probably bring more of the same. I had a good year on my predictions. I got an email where someone complimented me on my guesses. Too much goes into what I do to call it guessing. An email from Mike says, “You’re not always right but I’m impressed with how seldom you’re wrong.” Then one from J.B. asked, “How do you do that?” It...
We thought it would be nice to drive to Houston to watch the Texans clinch the AFC South Division championship against the Indianapolis Colts—the team that used to own that AFC South title until the Texans snatched it away last year—at Reliant Stadium Sunday. As luck would have it, sitting right in front of us was a burly old man dressed in a Santa Claus outfit. Fans come to NFL games decked out in many different get-ups, but why this time right in front of me. During halftime I asked the gentleman, “Do you get to watch...
“Don’t go patting yourself on the back too fast,” admonished my client in the rear of the boat as one of his partners flipped another keeper trout over the side.“These little lures are idiot proof!” While the comment was intended to be mildly derisive and was taken just that way with only a hint of a knowing smile, it was both a fair and generic description of the 3-inch Swim Bait……not the fisherman on the other end of the rod. That term is most often reserved for the lipless...
It is always the intent of any fisherman to do battle with a mighty fish, a giant of epic proportions that will live forever in memories for years to come. For most folks who do not regularly inhabit offshore waters your choices of really big fish to catch are rather small. The occasional redfish of 35 to 40 inches are often the biggest boys in the neighborhood next to alligator gar or maybe a big catfish. You can add a pair of names to the list of heavyweights that routinely make a name for themselves during this time of...
I don’t know that the catching could have been much easier in Sabine Lake and the river than it was across the Thanksgiving holidays. There was a ton of folks fishing and even the added pressure didn’t have a negative effect on the bite. The only problem and it was a serious problem that had to be dealt with safely each morning, was the fog. The massive and tragic pile up on I-10 that involved some 150 vehicles Thursday morning was the product of too much speed in limited vis...
Regardless of your choice of venues, if you like catching more than fishing, you need to get to your favorite fishing hole as quickly as possible. I don’t know if the fish are biting in the local farm ponds and rice canals as well, but it is happening everywhere else! It was certainly no secret that the bite in Sabine Lake had been improving daily and that bite has only gotten better in that we are once again finding more 16 to 20 inch trout mixed in with the redfish. F...
After a solid week of perfect weather, the Triangle Tail Chasers were greeted with ugly weather Saturday morning for their final event of the year. With the club championship on the line, however, a little thing like wind and driving rain was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. When all was said and done, J. Rod Broussard and Freddie Frederick posted a 24.88 pound catch to take top honors for the day. Robby Trahan and son, Justin finished second with 23.47 pounds and narr...
Only because it isn’t my cup of tea, I was very much surprised by the huge number of people that packed the Orange pubic launch and park on Simmons Drive to watch the boat races on the Sabine this weekend. I am not much on watching cars, horses or boats run around in circles, but everything from the live music to having to choose between brisket sandwiches or shrimp kabobs were enjoyable diversions. I had a front row parking spot at 11:00 Saturday morning only to find m...
ISAAC FOLLOWS KATRINA’S PATH, POLITICS IN AIR On the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Isaac followed the same path with New Orleans in it’s sights. In 2005, Katrina killed 1,800 and drowned 80 percent of New Orleans, which hasn’t fully recovered. Hurricane Isaac comes to New Orleans much milder and the city was much better prepared. Southern Mississippi is the place that doesn’t have seawalls and will see damage. I visited Bay Saint Louis, Diamond Head, etc. a week after Katrina. I will never forget the devasta...
