Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
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Okay….you only have 359 days left in 2021 to catch the largest bass of your life and you are burning one of them today. The game changed for bass fishermen in 1986 when limits were reduced to protect the resource and ever since that day, “catch and release” has become the accepted norm. More importatntly….it has worked even better than anticipated! While it was initially painful for anglers that had built their reputations on consistently returning to the dock with limits, goals were suddenly changed, but most of those e...
4: WORSE YEAR SINCE 1918 President Donald Trump's impeachment trial was overwhelmed by a deadly pandemic, a racial divide, and a president's baseless attacks on the election itself. The past 12 months have left the United States a different place. Even though the U.S. is 4% of the world's population, it has recorded nearly 345,000 deaths and 19.5 million cases of COVID-19, 21% of the world's deaths and cases. It didn't have to be this way. The Commander-in-Chief wasn't at...
More often than not, the joy of receiving a new rod and reel for Christmas is somewhat diminished by inclement weather that is not conducive to spending even a few minutes on the water. That, however, has not been the case of late and eight-year old Joey Lane was already trying out his new rod at his Grandfather’s pond the morning after Santa left town. The only problem for Joey was that Santa failed to leave enough lures to get him through a morning of fishing.Spinner baits are not the best choice of lures for fearless y...
While waiting in line to see if I was old enough to qualify for my vaccine shot, this burly dude with a white beard and straggly white hair comes barging in a shoved his way ahead of me in the line. “Hey buddy,” I told him, “you can’t just break into line like that!!” “I’m in a big hurry and besides I’m older than you, so I belong ahead of you,” he retorted. “Just because you look older doesn’t mean you are,” I told him as I was starting to lose my patience. “Now get your...
Unfortunately, I don’t know that I have ever had a more inclusive idea as to what is going on both here on Sabine Lake and Toledo Bend than I do right now.Thanks to Covid, however, I have been unable to put even a single tip to use for the better part of two weeks. I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the non-stop texts I have received wishing me well.In my case, however, that is a little misleading as I don’t text and trying to answer even one can tie up the remainder of any...
If you are headed to the lake this weekend and you are looking for a hot tip, you would be hard pressed to do any better than talking with Tyler Shearin or Kameryn Henderson. The Orangefield duo just blew the rest of the field away in last week’s Texas Elite Student Anglers Tournament hosted on Rayburn. Shearin and Henderson’s 18.81 pound bag earned them a $400 check and their 6.83-pound bass took big bass honors as well. Two of the LCM teams managed top ten finishes as wel...
The Upper Coast Kayak Association hosted the final event of their One Fish Wonder Series out of The Salt Club on Pleasure Island and the winner came as no surprise to the rest of the field. Each competitor is allowed to weigh in only one redfish and once again, Blaze Roberts made his way to the scales with that coveted fish! A single redfish can actually win one of seven different prizes at each event, but the largest red eventually earns the biggest payday. An angler earns...
The Upper Coast Kayak Association hosted the final event of their One Fish Wonder Series out of The Salt Club on Pleasure Island and the winner came as no surprise to the rest of the field. Each competitor is allowed to weigh in only one redfish and once again, Blaze Roberts made his way to the scales with that coveted fish! A single redfish can actually win one of seven different prizes at each event, but the largest red eventually earns the biggest payday. An angler earns the Angler of the Year title with the heaviest...
“Meet Bill and I at that little boat ramp in Bridge City at 3:00 and bring your waders. ”I didn’t even know who sent the text, but the unexpected message merited a return call at the very least.” “Hey man, this is Marler Cal and I have limited on trout up to four pounds twice this week wading the north end of your lake and today looks perfect.” I hadn’t waded in over a year so in agreeing to meet them for a quick trip, I had no intention of exercising that option. On th...
LCM bass clubbers, Dakota Posey and Brendon Brones, teamed up to take care of business early last Saturday. Their third place finish on Sam Rayburn qualified them for the FLW National High School Championship tournament set for this summer on Lake Hartwell in South Carolina. The duo finished only one three-pound bass out of first with a 13-pound 1-ounce catch. The early qualification not only takes the pressure off the youngsters for the remainder of the upcoming season, but gives them plenty of time to gather information on...
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...
