Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
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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...
I discovered this past weekend that there is something even more challenging than fishing two tournaments at the same time and that is trying to cover both weigh-ins! As it turned out, I had to bale early on the Cops Helping Kids weigh-in as I have been working John Thomas’ O.C.A.R.C. event for the past 25 years and I wasn’t going to be late for this year’s edition. Jim Morrissey really did me a solid by emailing me the final stats for the Cops Helping Kids Tournament. I can...
I am thinking that you better arrive at your favorite boat launch early Saturday morning if you plan on fishing anywhere between Bessie Heights and the jetties. Contestants in both the OCARC tournament and Cops Helping Kids tournament will be vying for parking spaces and enough room to make a cast! The OCARC has hosted their annual fishing tournament the first weekend in August for a kazillion years, actually closer to 25, so that their patrons would never have to ask about...
I spent the past week running the roads between Jasper and Houston and there wasn’t a ditch or low lying field that wasn’t under water. While no one is complaining after last year’s drought all but dried up the impoundments across the state, most of that runoff will have to exit though Sabine lake via the Sabine and Neches Rivers. Thus far, it hasn’t washed out the incredibly good bite that we have enjoyed for the better part of a month, but it is still raining today and the f...
The results from last Saturday’s Triangle TailChasers tournament were a good indicator of just how hot the fishing on Sabine has been over the past few weeks. The local anglers that fish this circuit work for a living and are fortunate to squeeze in an afternoon or possibly even one day a week to scout out a winning pattern. Add to that the fact that they are looking for reds, trout, and flounder and the challenge is even more daunting! Twenty-one of the twenty-eight teams e...
Lawrence Delino had just strung another fat three pound trout before I headed his way with a bottle of cold water. After stopping long enough to get a backlash out of his son, Jay’s, reel I continued the short wade in the thigh deep water. I was scanning the shoreline looking for mullet on the surface when I heard him cut loose with an R rated expletive. When I looked up he was just standing there staring disgustedly in the direction of the LNG tanks some 16 miles to the south...
THANKS FOR TUNING IN Texas burns under 100 degree heat. This could be the summer that high temps set an all time record. The good thing is that as long as high pressure dominates, it will keep hurricanes away so don’t complain about the heat. Back in December, the experts were making the talk show circuit and predicting gas at the pump would go up to $5. Creaux and I said, “Not so.” We predicted that gas prices would fall to $3 and below a gallon by September. A lot of people were blaming President Obama for the high gas p...
David Legget opened the lid on the front storage box of my boat and reacted as though he had uncovered a snake. “This looks like a grave yard for empty bottles of Bullfrog sunscreen!” Some of them were in fact empty and ear marked for the garbage, but I store both empties and full bottles in a plastic shopping bag that had obviously not survived my inattentiveness. I learned long ago that most every brand of sunscreen will eat up everything from reel seats to upholstery so I t...
Anywhere you go along the gulf coast there is an unwritten standard by which all fish are judged, the magic mark that each angler strives to attain. For inshore fishermen the glory fish that causes anglers to stop and take a second look has got to be a trophy speckled trout. A bona fide 30” class or 10 pound trout is the fish of a lifetime for the coastal plugger. Fish in this class take on almost a mythical existence, just ask any serious trout angler about a fish of this m...
ELECTION TIME WILL SOON BE ON US I was just thinking about the disadvantage Republican Primary candidates have to face with no presidential race and how that will cut down the turn out. If the Primary had been held in March, with Santorum and Romney battling it out, there would have been more interest and excitement. The local GOP candidates are working hard but to create excitement is costly. Those that don’t spend the money will be left behind. Money moves the masses. Mitt Romney is not a great candidate yet he will be t...
SKEETERS, SCHOOLS AND HIGH GAS PRICES So far it’s been one of the mildest winters that I recall. It hasn’t been cold enough to kill the bugs and we have again been invaded by large “Skeeters.” The pests are so numerous that if you open your mouth you’ll suck in a load of them. If it continues we will have to escalate the spraying. Kids can’t go outdoors, parent’s fear they will be carried off and eaten up. Our school administrators across the state become more upset every day for the condition Gov. Rick Perry has put our e...
With no cover to run to or time to run from a driving rain that escalated from a slow drizzle to a monsoon in a matter of seconds, we wedged the bow of the boat up against the south bank of the ICW to wait it out under the overhanging cane and tallow tree branches. It was far from dry, but we were out of the wind and that was apparently good enough for two other fishermen headed our way in a fourteen foot aluminum boat as well. We were all wearing rain gear and were more irked by the conditions than the minor discomfort, but...
The traffic, which had been crawling at a snail’s pace in the westbound lane of Interstate 10, came to a standstill ten minutes ago. Drivers were becoming very impatient, with many of them coming out of their cars to take a look at what was happening further up the road. The weather was cloudy with winds gusting, but the temperature still didn’t feel like December and a week from Christmas. I rolled down my window and found out the culprit was a construction project less than a mile up the interstate. A rotund fellow wit...
In today’s highly specialized world of tackle and gear it seems like there is a bait for every individual situation. Lures have become so refined that the consumer cannot possibly ever catch unless they have a pocket full of cash and camp out at the local tackle shop. Now it’s one thing to have to worry about saltwater tackle and it’s quite another thing to worry about freshwater tackle, try worrying about both of them at the same time. Anglers on the upper coast of Texas are...
HISTORICAL HEAT AND DROUGHT The temperature reached 105 and was over 100 for the first five days in June. What makes it worse is that it hasn’t rained in months and the wind has gone down to a zero breeze. Monday a little rain finally came. Some folks got up to a couple of inches including a good amount of hail. Most of us got only .5 of an inch, enough to wash the dust off of the leaves. We could see the dark clouds to the south and east of us and prayed it would come our way but all we got was the over spray. For 38 years I...
DRY WEATHER, EASTER AND NEW JUDGE The moon is big and bright after being full Monday night. Good Friday and Easter arrives this weekend. The drought I talked about a few weeks ago gets worse by the day and no relief is in sight. Family gardens will suffer and crop yields will be off if rain doesn’t come soon. People should have sense enough not to burn with the dry, windy conditions but believe it or not, some people wait to see if Judge Thibodeaux will tell them not to. S...
In all honesty, had it not been for a great visit with some guides that I am lucky to see once or twice a year, the $10 parking fee would have been a waste of money at last week’s Houston Boat Show. Most of the boat manufacturers were represented, but there was little else to see in the way of new fishing tackle, lures, etc. The crowds may have been waiting on the final weekend, but attendance also appeared to be very poor up until that point. Capt. Charlie Paradoski and C...
TWENTY-TEN ENDS TWENTY-ELEVEN BEGINS The year 2010 has not been an easy year for America. The country was on the brink of a deep depression, the auto industry, GM & Chrysler, faced going under, which would have had a domino effect with citizens throughout the country waiting in bread lines. Large banks and mortgage companies had over extended in the last decade and were in deep trouble. When the year started, the country had lost eight million jobs, unemployment reached nearly 10 percent. Today, as we face 2011, the country...
I found out the other day that going Christmas shopping with a bunch of females isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. There’s more lolly-gagging and visiting than there is buying. I took a detour at the mall and opted to watch a long line of little boys and girls tell the department store Santa what they wanted for Christmas. Some were wide-eyed and eager while several had to be coaxed by a parent to climb onto Santa’s knee and tell him what to bring on Saturday. Suddenly, Santa stood up and pointed in my direction and said, “I k...
My first real deal encounter with striped bass was close to 15 years ago on the Sabine River, Capt. Dickie Colburn and myself were out scouting for an upcoming trip and we found much more than we bargained for to say the least. On a very popular stretch of the Sabine we came upon a huge group of gulls working over schooling fish chasing shrimp. Immediately we thought speckled trout and began to catch good solid keeper fish on nearly every cast. After landing several fish we...
