On the rocks, please!

There’s a catchy little tune from the late-90s by one of those one-hit wonder bands that goes, “Ooh, baby it’s making me crazy. How bizarre, how bizarre, how bizarre,” and it perfectly illustrates Sabine Lake fishing in 2025.

This has been a most uniquely frustrating year so far because it has had everything but consistency, nothing remotely normal, yet the overall fishing has been surprisingly good.

Many of the tried and true patterns that produce every year have been scrapped for newer ones out of necessity and desperation. I have spent more time this year doing new things and fishing new areas than I ever have in my 30-plus years of guiding on this body of water and it’s been a roller coaster.

Forever I shunned any water south of the Causeway Bridge, unless it was just absolutely the last program available. It was always a hassle to get down there and deal with folks on the jetty rocks. And, for whatever reason, it seemed like every time I did go I broke something. So, I eventually gave up on the idea altogether and stayed up here on my home end and kept doing what I knew best.

Fast forward to 2025 and all the curveballs that it presented. I now stand before you as a changed man. One who has resorted to a whole host of new fishing patterns that are actually pretty dang cool…once you master them.

The biggest challenge that Sabine anglers have faced this year has been the constant dredging and pipeline work going on across the lake. A huge gas pipeline is going in and runs from the north end to the south end, almost cutting the lake in half as it enters from the Louisiana marsh in East Pass. The daily dredging and insane amount of boat traffic has wreaked havoc for local fishermen as water clarity and overall travel access are a crapshoot from one day to the next. Due to these activities most folks have migrated towards the south end of the lake where the conditions are less-impacted.

We saw an old pattern come back to life this year as folks congregated on the giant oyster reef near the Causeway and caught good numbers of solid trout drifting soft plastics and bumping the shell; or as locals often refer to it – dredging the reef. Still others continued farther south and called the jetties home for a good portion of the year and that program paid dividends as well.

The more adventurous anglers took it one step farther and patrolled the beachfront, opting to tangle with the herds of redfish that seemed to be everywhere, along with the solid bite from a very respectable population of tripletail. All of these patterns produced but it left a massive amount of the lake on the north end with little to no traffic as anglers ran south looking for better conditions. However, we should always remember that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and you don’t always have to have perfect water to catch fish.

At some point, on my trips back up from the south end of the lake, I would check several areas on the north end, simply because I believed the fish were or should be there. I started seeing all the usual suspects such as ladyfish and dolphins, so I knew there had to be other species, somewhere. During one of my searches I decided to try a pattern we usually reserve for the jetties and that was to fish any rock structure I could find. Now, Sabine Lake has miles and miles of rocky shoreline that very few anglers pay attention to, let alone fish, and some of it looked as good an option as any.

Upon closer inspection the rocks were full of life, small crabs clung to the rocks, baitfish rafted up in all the gaps, and the water clarity was surprisingly decent. It took no time to realize that patrolling the rocks with a twitchbait such as Heddon’s Swim’n Image or Berkley’s Cutter, along with soft plastic swimbaits like the Mulletron from Z-Man could all be very productive. All these baits can be worked with varying actions and will draw vicious strikes, especially when paused during the retrieve.

Perhaps the toughest part of the rock pattern is deciding when and where to start as the shorelines all look very similar until you really inspect them closely and look for subtle nuances or clues as to what lies below the surface. A long straight bank may have areas where the submerged rocks jut out farther into the lake, making great places for predator fish to ambush bait.

There may also be holes in the rocks that change the direction of the currents or even different kinds of vegetation growing here and there that will attract more forage species than others. I have noticed in areas impacted by ship wakes that small crabs and shrimp are frequently displaced from the rocks by the currents and become easy pickings for predators cruising the edges, looking for an easy meal.

Another thing to watch for is trash or debris that is hung in the rocks making any sort of eddy or break in the current. There are plenty of times that old trees that float down the river or channels get lodged in the rocks and they are great places to target while you are covering the shoreline. Depending on the area, I like to position my boat about 10 yards off the rocks so I can fish parallel to the shoreline. By staying parallel you can keep you lure in the same depth along the rocks for longer periods of time, which turns into more strikes and more fish.

If you are in an area where there is ship traffic you need to pay close attention so you don’t get washed up on the rocks by the large wakes. In shallower areas I like to target the “seam” where the rocks end and the sand or muddy bottom begins because this tends to produce more trout.

Presentations made tight to the rocks will more often than not draw strikes from redfish as they probe for crabs or ambush small baitfish. Don’t be afraid to get your lure up in those tight places and bounce it off the rocks; it’s those types of presentations that will produce some serious strikes.

Fishing the rocks is a game of covering water and putting in your time but the rewards are definitely worth the effort. Lots of folks will try this pattern but not have the patience to keep doing it for long periods, so dealing with traffic or other fishermen is not often an issue. The process of discovery using this pattern is eye-opening and can be addictive, especially when the strikes are solid.

As we head into the home stretch of the year we hope that the dredging and work activities slow down or finish up altogether and allow Sabine to get back to a somewhat normal state. It will be very interesting to see how things will change, or if they even change at all. My hope is that we have seen an increase in better fish over the last two years and that trend continues as we get into the much anticipated fall fishing season. For some reason we have been a little behind schedule but with the real cold fronts are on the horizon that could more than make up for lost time as the marshes dump the current shrimp crop and the dinner bell rings for the trout and redfish in the lake.

Please get out and enjoy the opportunity to be on the water during this time of the year and don’t forget to bring a kid fishing when you get a chance.