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.