How Fish Relate to Structure

The term “fishing structure” is often bandied about. But, what does it mean? Here's a simple experiment you can easily try at home, which illustrates exactly what I am talking about.

If you were to take a few fish and put them in an aquarium with nothing but water in it, they would swim about the tank aimlessly, relating neither to any part of the tank nor to each other. If you were to put a small rock in the tank, you would quickly see that all of the fish will swim around it. If you were to take the rock out and put a branch in, the fish would go to that. If you were to change the branch for a stripe of tape on the outside of the tank, the fish would move to it. Starting to get the picture? The fish will gravitate towards anything that is different from the rest of their surroundings.

This is a behaviour common to most fish species. It is why you will often find several species inhabiting the same piece of structure in a lake. Let's scale this concept up and consider it in terms of a lake. The lake equivalents to our aquarium examples might be a reef, a shoal, a point, a rockpile might represent the small rock. A fallen tree might represent the twig. The stripe of tape might represent the stripe of tape.

Let's consider a single piece of structure, say a point, that runs 50 feet out from the shore and tapers away from 6 feet to the main lake basin's depth of 30 feet. If that point were completely uniform in shape and make-up then it would have no specific feature that would concentrate fish. The only thing to concentrate them would be the fishes' preference for, light penetration, depth and temperature. However, no piece of structure is uniform and there will be further differences on that point. There might be a spot with a sharper drop, there might be a spot with a small weed clump, there might be an area of smaller broken rock that holds more baitfish or crayfish. There might be an area where sand meets the rock. These area will all hold more fish. These types of areas are commonly called, “The Spot on the Spot”.

It has been said that 90% of the fish are in 10% of the lake and in our experience we have found that to be very true. If you spend your time searching and probing for these spots on the spot, you will find they will Up your Catch dramatically. Instead of wasting your time fishing "nothing" water, you will be using your time more wisely by fishing high percentage locations where the danger of running into fish, is extremely high!

When we pull up to a spot, we will look very carefully at the sonar to look for changes in the bottom which could hold fish. We are looking for changes in the bottom such as where two types of material meet. We are looking for drops or rises in depth. We are looking for weedgrowth. We are looking for signs of broken rock. Is the structure rock, sand, muck or gravel or a mixture? We will throw out marker buoys as a visual aid for us to understand how the structure is laid out and where the key elements are.

We will then probe the structure with baits heavy enough that they will stay in contact with the bottom; Atomic Wedgie on a ballhead jig or a Tube. By using a quality, medium -heavy graphite spinning rod, a quality reel with no play in it and a thin superline such as 8 or 10lb PowerPro or Fireline, if you concentrate on the clues you are getting through the rod, you can feel if you are on rock, muck or sand. You can feel how big the rocks are. You can feel the bait dropping and get a sense of how far and how quickly. You can feel weeds and whether or not they've fouled your hook. But, most of all, you can feel the fish! Even the most subtle of takes is transmitted through the line and rod to your hand. Bill and I often look like we're in a trance, staring off into space, when we're fishing like this. We're not space cadets, we're concentrating.

By using the marker buoys as reference points, you can easily cast repeatedly to the spot on the spot. Without marker buoys, you won't believe how easy it is, even for very experienced fishermen who know the lake intimately, to become completely disoriented. Sometimes a slight difference of a few feet can make a huge difference to your catch rate.

Once you have probed the depths and found those spots, you can be rest assured you have spots where you can catch fish, for life. Weeds may come and go but rocks will be there forever!