Keith Combs Powers Through Cold Fronts

KEITH COMBS, A RECORD-SETTING three-time winner of the Toyota Texas Bass Classic, loves power fishing. In particular, he’s deadly with a deep-diving crankbait such as a Strike King 6XD or 10XD on offshore structure. When the inevitable late fall and winter cold snaps hit the Lone Star State, however, he turns to a more finesse-oriented approach.

It’s a vertical form of jigging, which in Tennessee they might call “Damiki Rigging,” but he adds his own twists to it to make it most effective at fooling and landing Texas-sized bass.

“When we get into the colder months, the shad start to slow down,” he explained. “And when a cold front comes through that’s particularly pronounced. I’m usually talking here about water temperatures in the low 50s. One of my favorite ways to catch them in those circumstances is to fish vertically with a Strike King Baby Z Too soft jerkbait.”

He’ll spend ample time looking for the bait first, plying creek channels and ditches until he sees the intersection of shad and bass. “If you find fish around bait,” he said. “I can almost guarantee you this will work.”

On lakes like Sam Rayburn or Toledo Bend, that usually means drains that drop from 15 to 18 feet at the edge down to 25 or 30 feet. On a steeper, clearer reservoir like Amistad, the key depths are likely to be greater. Often the depth range is patternable, but he cautioned anglers not to get too locked in which can result in missing key schools.

He’ll use his Humminbird down-imaging and two-dimensional sonar to find the fish, and then back off of them and target individual specimens with his Mega Live technology. After that it’s usually just a short pitch cast to see if the fish is interested.

“You always want to hover it right over the fish’s head,” he explained. “It should look like one shad just sitting there.” He rigs the Baby Z-Too (almost always in Pearl) on a handmade 3/8 or ½ ounce jig head.

Why so heavy? “I want to get it down to him as quickly as I can when I see him on the graph.” The key to the proper jig head is that it have a 90 degree eye, which means that the bait will sit perfectly horizontal at rest.

Once the lure is directly above the targeted bass, in its line of sight, he tends to do very little in terms of manipulation. Remember, the shad at this time of year are generally inactive.

However, if he sees a fish move toward the lure on his Humminbird unit, he’ll impart miniscule shakes to trigger a bite. If the fish doesn’t approach in attack mode, but rather makes a slow ascent in the general direction of the lure, he’ll raise his rod tip slightly to move it away, again to force some sort of triggering.

Although many of the Tennesseans and northerners may use spinning gear for this kind of vertical jigging, Combs still relies upon baitcasting tackle, although it’s slightly downsized from what he uses for most other techniques.

It starts with a 6-foot,10-inch medium-heavy Shimano Zodias rod, which he pairs with a Metanium MGL reel. “It’s just a personal preference,” he said of the baitcasting gear. “I know a lot of anglers think that a spinning reel gives them a big advantage here because you need to have an ultra-smooth drag system, but I get that from the MGL.”

He spools the reel with 30-pound test Seaguar Smackdown braid with a 12-foot leader of 10-pound test InvisX attached to it. Not only does the braid provide him with a direct sense of feel, but it doesn’t suffer through the inevitable line twist of straight fluoro.

One key is to make sure that you let the fish eat the bait before you set the hook – in this era of “video game fishing” it’s easy to pull the trigger too soon and snatch it away from them. “Once they’re hooked, you’ve usually got them,” Combs added. “That’s typical of cold water fishing.”

Although the vertical jig head is his prime tool under these conditions, he also keeps a tailspinner and a small swimbait – such as a Strike King Rage Swimmer 3.3 – on the deck of his Ranger throughout the winter. Some days the fish show a decided preference for one of the others, but if Combs can’t be cranking, he’d rather be hunting those ditch fish and picking out the ones he wants to catch with his Baby Z Too.

 

Email Pete Robbins at ContactUs@fishgame.com

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