Offshore Bass Fishing Hotspots: Year-Round Proven Strategies

Offshore Bass Fishing Hotspots: Year-Round Proven Strategies - Keith Combs

Do you want to learn how to better locate and catch bass offshore? While many anglers consider offshore fishing strictly a summer-time activity, it’s a variable strategy in many lakes all year long. “Offshore fishing, for really anything I've won in my career, that's the technique that I've leaned on,” said Keith Combs. In this seminar, Combs breaks down offshore fishing during the spring, summer, winter, and fall. During the late winter and early fall – which Combs combines as pre-spawn – he often relies on lipless crankbaits to target fish preparing to move into shallow water to spawn. During the late spring, the Gizzard and Threadfin shad spawns play a major role for Combs as he targets bass with moving baits like squarebill crankbaits, swimbaits, and vibrating jigs. The summer, which is the time of year most people associate with offshore fishing, Combs breaks out the deep diving crankbaits and football jigs. Once largemouth bass are done spawning and make their way make out to mainlake structure, targeting schools of fish on offshore structure can be one of the most exciting ways to fish – if you can find them. Offshore fishing in the fall, however, can be a little more complicated. Bass tend to be scattered more that time of year than any other, which can make locating big schools difficult. In the winter, Combs suggests targeting deep schools of baitfish that have pulled away from covered in favor of deep humps and channels. Combs will often target those fish by using soft jerkbaits to drop above the fish to entice them to swim up after the bait. In addition to all of these techniques, Combs goes into detail on the necessary gear setups, color selection, grass flat fishing, and much more!