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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