Combs Goes Super Shallow Post-Spawn

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BASSMASTER ELITE SERIES PRO Keith Combs of Huntington is known for his devotion to offshore angling and his deep water prowess, but he has a dirty little secret to tell: When the bass throughout Texas are completely done spawning, he’s not exclusively plowing deepwater points, humps and drains with his favorite Strike King 6XD and 10XD crankbaits. Instead, he’s taking his boat as shallow as it will go and targeting bass where there’s barely enough water to cover their backs.

“It happens on just about every lake in Texas, but it’s especially good on grass lakes,” said Combs, who lives on Sam Rayburn, formerly guided on Amistad, and has won the Toyota Texas Bass Classic three times, including a record-setting effort on Lake Fork in 2014. “They’ll get shallower than you’d think. In fact, many times the reason that people don’t catch fish this way is because they’re not getting shallow enough. I want my boat in 2 to 3 feet of water and the fish may be in a foot to 18 inches. You should be able to see the bottom.”

It’s not necessarily limited to one part of the fishery, either. While he tends to start off looking in more protected bays and pockets, some of his best days pursuing this pattern have come on the shallowest portion of main lake flat. Indeed, while those flats don’t always produce as many fish, oftentimes they’ll give up bigger specimens.

The really fun part is that his two best tools in this scenario are both surface lures, creating hellacious and violent strikes and solid hookup percentages. “This is a time of year, when most of them get it,” he explained. “In June there are lots of bluegills and gizzard shad up shallow. Those bass are there to eat and when they strike they’re going to eat it. It’s not like those reaction strikes that come earlier and later where you may get an aggressive hit but they’ll frequently miss it.”

He keeps both a walking bait, like a Strike King Sexy Dog, and a hollow-bodied frog, like the Sexy Frog on his deck – using the former where cover allows, and the latter as a follow up around matted or floating vegetation. Other moving lures, like buzzbaits and plopper-style topwaters, can generate strikes, but Combs feels that the walk-the-dog motion of the Sexy Dog is more versatile, particularly in the “Hard Knock” model that calls bass from a distance.

“Unlike a buzzbait, if you’re in a zone where you really feel you should get a bit, you can slow it down or even stop it without losing effectiveness,” he explained. “I’ll slow down, make short, deliberate chops, and that keeps it in the strike zone longer. They very seldom miss it. They almost always get it.” He’ll use various shad patterns in clear to lightly stained water, with black a good option in cloudy or stormy conditions. He’ll turn to a bone-colored topwater when the water is dirtier. He fishes it on a Shimano Zodias 6’10” medium-heavy baitcasting rod, paired with a Shimano Curado 150 DC reel. He likes 40 or 50 pound Seaguar Smackdown braided line for it’s long casts and low stretch, which allows him to get solid hook sets at a distance, and then winch big bass away from cover.

When the frog is in the water, he’ll walk it slowly in heavy cover and then speed it through the holes to generate strikes and cover ground. While hydrilla is the dominant grass on many Texas lakes, even on fisheries where it doesn’t exist, Combs will use the frog in various types of shoreline vegetation. Because he needs to move frog-biters quickly, he’ll throw it on a Shimano Zodias 175H, a 7’5” heavy-action stick that he pairs with a Curado 200 DC spooled with 50 or 65 pound Smackdown.

While many anglers are inclined to look shallow early, and then abandon the topwater bite as the sun gets up, Combs often goes the opposite way. He’ll check out his offshore money holes first thing, and then if he’s struggling, he’ll go up shallow mid-day.

“To be honest, it’s usually at its best in the middle of the day,” he said. “You can get some bites in the morning, but it just seems to get better and better later.”

 

Email Pete Robbins at ContactUs@fishgame.com

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