The Difference Between Structure and Cover

Many bass fishermen talk about “structure” when they’re actually referring to “cover.” In bass-fishing parlance, cover is defined as that which provides bass a place of concealment. In this sense, cover might include emergent and submergent aquatic vegetation, flooded trees, bushes, rocks and boulders, stumps, logs, sunken boats—even shade and muddy water.

Structure is properly described as changes in bottom configuration: drop-offs, ledges, humps, sandbars, points, ditches, depressions, channels and places where two bottom types meet (clay and exposed slab rock, for example).

Inshore, bass that aren’t cruising along the bank usually hold around shoreline cover of some sort. Offshore, however, structure is the most important key to locating fish. A small brush pile (cover) resting on the lip of a drop-off (structure) in 15 feet of water is likely to have many more bass around it than a pile of brush on a plain flat bottom in 15 feet.

The perfect setup is to locate an offshore area where there is structure and cover together. Some examples: a submerged point with rocks on the end that drops off into deep water, a submerged ledge that’s lined with stumps and a treetop lying in the bottom of a narrow creek channel.