CONDITIONS
Weather | extreme rising water throughout; sunny and mild on day one; rainy on days two through four; thunderstorms on day three; post-frontal, windy and cold on day four air temperature | low 50s to upper 60s Water temperature | low to mid-60s and dropping moon Phase | new Predominant lake features | flooded bushes and trees, rocky banks, waterfalls and other in-flows
the water, fishing new areas he couldn’ t get to on previous days.
“ Get to the bank,” McCombs says.“ That was my goal. Get in behind bushes and trees and get to the bank. If there was a flooded yard or meadow back in behind the bushes, that was money.
“ I think a lot of the little baitfish and maybe shad get right up there where the waterline meets that green grass,” he adds.“ I don’ t know if they’ re feeding on it or what, but it’ s like bass know to find food there.”
The other thing McCombs kept an eye out for on the lawns was spawning carp. He says the boisterous activity of big carp spawning up in inches of water seems to attract bass as if it was some kind of feeding activity.
“ When I was a kid we would try to snag spawning carp with lures,” he recalls.“ And every now and then a big bass would actually eat the lure. That’ s a little trick I’ ve never forgotten.”
McCombs was familiar with the yard pattern from fishing Smith Lake in Alabama, where bass also get in flooded yards and fields when the water shoots up 6 or 7 feet. In his experience, it’ s a go-to pattern for big fish, which he proved at Beaver Lake.
He caught 18 pounds, 15 ounces of lawn largemouths on day three, easily the biggest limit of the tournament, which carried him to the win with a four-day total of 47 pounds, 1 ounce.
McCombs’ favorite lure for hunting down lawn lunkers is a buzzbait. In the case of Beaver Lake, he used a white 3 / 8-ounce War Eagle buzzbait teamed with a white 4-inch Zoom Horny Toad. He fished the buzzbait on 25-poundtest fluorocarbon.
Some of McCombs’ catches were set up by his exceptional casting skills as he slipped and skipped the buzzbait under trees and bushes to the lawns with impressive underhand casts using a 7-foot, 3-inch Shimano Crucial rod.
McCombs’ casting ability is legendary among his peers, several of photo by Sean oStRuSzka whom claim McCombs can put baits, especially buzzbaits, in places where average anglers could never reach.
Pattern no. 2: fishing the old shoreline
Fishing the old shoreline or fishing where the fish were positioned before the rise turned into a solid pattern for Jason Reyes of Huffman, Texas, who finished second, and Cody Meyer of Auburn, Calif., who finished fifth.
Reyes’ key spot for at least half of the tournament was a small shoal connected to a main-lake island by a shallow saddle. On the first day of practice, the shoal and saddle were at the surface or just under the surface. As the week went on, they eventually became submerged by some 12 feet of water. Despite the rise, Reyes continued to fish the original shoreline, especially in the saddle, where he thinks bass were ambushing shad moving across the top of the structure.
“ Sometimes when lakes rise fast like that, bass stay right along the old shoreline,” Reyes says.“ That was certainly the case on that spot, at least for the first three days of the tournament. I think by the final day the water had gotten so high above them they finally moved, because I could never reconnect with them again.”
Reyes scored with 1 / 8-ounce shaky heads rigged with Zoom Finesse Worms and Trick Worms.
Cody Meyer found success in an old smallmouth haunt in the lower end that had been good to him over the years. The spot consisted of a deep gravel flat, which continued to hold smallmouths for the first two days of the tournament. Meyer found the smallies in about 25 feet during practice and continued to catch them even when the productive flat was submerged to 32 to 33 feet.
“ One thing I’ ve learned out West where lakes can rise as much as 10 feet in a day is that bass, especially smallmouths, will stay put even in that fast rise,” Meyer says.“ They’ re usually right in the same places where they were before it came up.”
Meyer’ s hot spot, which helped give him the lead for the first two days, eventually played out. But he believes its failure to produce on the weekend was more a result of his own fishing pressure than rising water.
McCombs’ limit of nearly 19 pounds on day three put him in the driver’ s seat and proved what the shallow topwater pattern was capable of.
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