Why do bass prefer isolated structure?

[Catt]

18 hours ago, Tennessee Boy said:

While I’m a big Buck Perry fan,  his explanation of how fish use structure has be proven wrong for the most part.

 

Name a few

 

18 hours ago, Tennessee Boy said:

do they sometimes use structure as cover and cover as structure?

 

Please explain 

[Pat Brown]

I've noticed that on 5 acre ponds that I fish that basically have a bowl shape everything is both structure and cover at different times of year.  There are certain parts of the pond where a piece of cover is literally the only hard spot in the area. So it is also treated like structure even though it was placed on the Earth's crust by human beings. There are also places where the original concrete pour rises up out of the silt and these are like pieces of cover for the fish even though they're part of the bottom contour. The point is fish like little changes for some reason. My guess if it had to be boiled down to an objective. Measurable observable reason: it would probably be the fact that it's breaking the current in a way that perhaps we aren't even aware of or can't see that the bass appreciate.

[gobig]

I agree with Catt 1000%. Structure is the bottom contour. It is important to differentiate structure from cover because the best cover is on or near prime structure. Structure is the baseline. All under water life relates to it.

[Catt]

When talking "structure",  like @WRB mentioned we need to delineate between ponds, river/creeks, natural bodies of water, & man made lakes & reservoirs.

 

Cover that's mentioned as being structure is breaks/breaklines. Yes breaks/breaklines are technically structure. 

 

Isolated structure or cover doesn't necessarily have to be off by itself to attract bass. 

[Tennessee Boy]

10 hours ago, Catt said:

Name a few

 

Please explain 

The video below summarizes Buck Perry's theories on bass movement. Many years ago, I embraced these teachings, and it made me a better angler. Perry provides guidelines on where to find fish, and these methods are effective. However, he also explains why fish are found in these areas, and his reasons for how fish use structure have been mostly debunked by tracking studies and observations using sonar. His primary principle that 'deep water is the home of the fish' and that fish migrate from deep to shallow water using structure is mostly incorrect. It is now known that most, though not all, largemouth bass remain within a specific home range. They can navigate this range in darkness as if equipped with a built-in GPS. Although fish tend to congregate around cover and structure, making it sensible to fish these areas, they also roam extensively. The professional fishing world has been disrupted because tournaments are increasingly won by targeting these roaming fish. Anglers who defy 'the rules' by targeting non-conforming fish are achieving remarkable success. 

 

Distinguishing between cover and structure seems irrelevant if fish don’t differentiate between them.  Bass can use both as a current break, an ambush point, and for protection. Perry suggested that fish could use an old fence row as a structural pathway between deep and shallow waters.  Is it important to properly define structure and cover?  I don’t know. 

 

I spent the first 20 years of my fishing life learning the rules. Over the last 20 years, I feel like I have been unlearning them.  The rules help me guess where the high percentage areas are. 

Advancing technology has increasingly helped me evaluate the effectiveness of my guesses and at the same time it has taken much of the guesswork out of the game.

 

If I can find fish do I need to know why they are there?  At this point I have more questions than answers but I’m confident that I’m better off with unanswered questions than I am with incorrect answers.

 

 

 

[Catt]

@Tennessee Boy The videos of Todd Driscoll using radio telemetry & FFS verified what Buck taught as well as what many of us believed.

 

A portion of the population stay within a certain distance from the shoreline.

A portion of the population send their entire lifetime never seeing a shoreline.

A portion of the population move between the two.

 

Ya gotta realize what Buck did was without any kind of electronics. 

[Woody B]

I've always considered Buck Perry to be a genius.   He was from NC.  I never met him but know a couple people who were friends with him.   

 

So, my opinion, and views regarding structure and cover.  I'll be the first to admit I use both of those terms wrong at times.   I've always believed points, especially ones that are fairly long to be Bass magnets.  I believe it helps if there's stumps, brushpiles or rocks on or around the point.  Maps have been mentioned.  It amazes me the people who don't pay their maps/charts or electronics any attention.   Points aren't always, or even usually where the shoreline indicates.   I see people all the time fishing what I believe they think are points that have no under water point, or a curving point that isn't where it "looks" like it should be.   I "think" if there's a (real) point, relatively close to the main channel (and ledge) AND a protected pocket there will pretty much always be Bass around.  I suppose size of lake makes a big difference for some of this.   

 

When I catch a decent Bass I ask myself "why was that Bass here?"    Sometimes, especially if I felt like I "stumbled" on a decent Bass I'll spend way more time graphing the area after I've caught Bass than I do before.   

[12poundbass]

Cats prefer isolated cover too! Notice the laser pointer in the background. This is what he’s lying in wait for. 
 

 

[Caiden24]

On 4/15/2024 at 9:20 AM, Catt said:

When talking "structure",  like @WRB mentioned we need to delineate between ponds, river/creeks, natural bodies of water, & man made lakes & reservoirs.

 

Cover that's mentioned as being structure is breaks/breaklines. Yes breaks/breaklines are technically structure. 

 

Isolated structure or cover doesn't necessarily have to be off by itself to attract bass. 

Ok thanks, I asked this earlier but how are cover and structure used differently? It would be isolated cover if there was a log that was around a bunch of plants though right? Because the log is something different and isolated from other logs

On 4/15/2024 at 11:38 AM, Tennessee Boy said:

The video below summarizes Buck Perry's theories on bass movement. Many years ago, I embraced these teachings, and it made me a better angler. Perry provides guidelines on where to find fish, and these methods are effective. However, he also explains why fish are found in these areas, and his reasons for how fish use structure have been mostly debunked by tracking studies and observations using sonar. His primary principle that 'deep water is the home of the fish' and that fish migrate from deep to shallow water using structure is mostly incorrect. It is now known that most, though not all, largemouth bass remain within a specific home range. They can navigate this range in darkness as if equipped with a built-in GPS. Although fish tend to congregate around cover and structure, making it sensible to fish these areas, they also roam extensively. The professional fishing world has been disrupted because tournaments are increasingly won by targeting these roaming fish. Anglers who defy 'the rules' by targeting non-conforming fish are achieving remarkable success. 

 

Distinguishing between cover and structure seems irrelevant if fish don’t differentiate between them.  Bass can use both as a current break, an ambush point, and for protection. Perry suggested that fish could use an old fence row as a structural pathway between deep and shallow waters.  Is it important to properly define structure and cover?  I don’t know. 

 

I spent the first 20 years of my fishing life learning the rules. Over the last 20 years, I feel like I have been unlearning them.  The rules help me guess where the high percentage areas are. 

Advancing technology has increasingly helped me evaluate the effectiveness of my guesses and at the same time it has taken much of the guesswork out of the game.

 

If I can find fish do I need to know why they are there?  At this point I have more questions than answers but I’m confident that I’m better off with unanswered questions than I am with incorrect answers.

 

 

 

Thank you this makes more sense. And you bring up a good point for not needing to define the difference, it just seemed like people were saying they are used differently. 

On 4/15/2024 at 3:30 PM, Woody B said:

I've always considered Buck Perry to be a genius.   He was from NC.  I never met him but know a couple people who were friends with him.   

 

So, my opinion, and views regarding structure and cover.  I'll be the first to admit I use both of those terms wrong at times.   I've always believed points, especially ones that are fairly long to be Bass magnets.  I believe it helps if there's stumps, brushpiles or rocks on or around the point.  Maps have been mentioned.  It amazes me the people who don't pay their maps/charts or electronics any attention.   Points aren't always, or even usually where the shoreline indicates.   I see people all the time fishing what I believe they think are points that have no under water point, or a curving point that isn't where it "looks" like it should be.   I "think" if there's a (real) point, relatively close to the main channel (and ledge) AND a protected pocket there will pretty much always be Bass around.  I suppose size of lake makes a big difference for some of this.   

 

When I catch a decent Bass I ask myself "why was that Bass here?"    Sometimes, especially if I felt like I "stumbled" on a decent Bass I'll spend way more time graphing the area after I've caught Bass than I do before.   

Ok thanks! When you talk about a point being close to the main channel and ledge do you mean like near the ledge were it drops off to the main channel?

[Catt]

@Caiden24 This is a huge subject & would eat up several pages. Lots of words & definitions are regional, thus causing confusion. 

 

Not trying to avoid your question but my suggestion would be to search this sight for previous discussion. While this site has a search function, I get better results using Google, type in structure, followed by bassresource.com.

[Pat Brown]

A cheap 120$ Garmin down imaging unit really helped me tremendously when I started to try to figure this stuff out in the post spawn last year.

 

Sometimes fish want a long gradual drop.  Sometimes fish want a steep drop.  Sometimes fish are sitting just beneath the drop pushing up.  Sometimes fish are sitting above the drop pushing down.  Sometimes there's brush on the drop and they are only biting when the shad balls randomly swim past the brush on the drop. Etc etc. Etc.

 

You only begin to get a fragment of a sense of how all of this stuff works on your body of water on the day you are out fishing with real time images of what's happening underneath the boat.

 

The reason it's a lot easier to fish shallow is because you can usually see a lot of the elements that they're using above the water still and it's easier to guess where you should cast.  But when I caught my first few big fish off humps and random offshore high spots, I started to get with the program pretty quickly.  There's times where you really wanna focus on offshore structure and times where shallow cover play more.  Only gonna get a sense of this the more time you spend on the water at your fishery with your fish.  Etc etc etc

[Tennessee Boy]

12 hours ago, 12poundbass said:

Cats prefer isolated cover too! Notice the laser pointer in the background. This is what he’s lying in wait for. 
 

 

Nice wooden structure that cat is up against.  😆

[MIbassyaker]

On 4/15/2024 at 2:38 PM, Tennessee Boy said:

Distinguishing between cover and structure seems irrelevant if fish don’t differentiate between them.  Bass can use both as a current break, an ambush point, and for protection. Perry suggested that fish could use an old fence row as a structural pathway between deep and shallow waters.  Is it important to properly define structure and cover?  I don’t know. 

 

 

I have wondered the same thing for some time.  When I re-read spoonplugging last summer, I noticed Perry did not at any point in that book argue for the kind of distinction between structure and cover people split hairs over today, but frequently used the term "structure" to refer to things like the fence row that we'd call cover elements. 

[gobig]

I fall into the camp that structure should be identified as the shape of the earth and I’ll try and simplify why. Let use a hypothetical lake that has docks all around the whole lake. There are going to be docks that are far more productive and will produce larger fish than others. Why? It has to do with the relationship to the structure. By looking at a map you can identify these key areas with out even knowing if a dock is there. This can be applied to any type of fishing. On wicked tuna they fish the outer banks. If you start thinking about it there are a ton of examples.

 

Catt has mentioned break lines several times and no one has bit. This is Pandora’s box. There are hard break lines and there are soft. There are break lines that move by the minute.

[Team9nine]

One could argue it's important to define the difference between the two based on the title of this thread. In Perry's world, there was no such thing as "isolated structure." It would have simply read, "Why do bass prefer structure?" An explanation of, or reference to, "cover" and it's importance can also be found in a couple sections of the book, but Perry's preferred term was "break," using it in conjunction with, or relating to, structure, breaklines and deep water/sanctuary. It's why you'll find one of the terms in the Spoonplugger's glossary (in the book) and not the other. You could argue it also didn't become an issue (cover vs. structure) until sometime after the book was published, as more and more writers and fishing magazines proliferated and started using the terms much more loosely than how Perry had, adding to the confusion.

[Choporoz]

On 4/13/2024 at 8:05 AM, ol'crickety said:

Because of assertions like yours, I work wood whenever I see it and I have caught some nice bass from laydowns, like a six-pounder last year, but I catch far more bass in weeds. Weird, isn't it, how bass behavior varies?

Bass behavior varies... no question.  ....perhaps some of the perceived differences in sucess between you and @Bird (wood v. grass) have to do as much with varied angler behavior 

[WRB]

Look at flat field with an oak tree in the middle, where do you think the birds will be..,,in the tree of course. Same applies to bass they will be located where food and shelter is. 
Buck Perry is considered the father of structure fishing and he refused to use any form of sonar relied on maps and visual terrain while trolling his Spoon plugs.

When I met Perry in the 60’s he told me sonar units are worthless, I was shocked because my Flasher was very helpful to locate structure elements that held bass.

Tom

[Bankc]

Think of it like this.  If there's only one bar in the town, then everybody in town will go to the same bar.  But if there are thousands of bars in the town, and thousands of people, then there are going to be a lot of empty bars, because most people will want to go to one of the best bars where everyone else is.  So if you're looking for the most people, you either go to the best bars, or somewhere that doesn't have many bars to choose from.  

 

It's the same with structure and cover.  It's not that a tree buried amongst 100 other trees won't have a bass.  It's just less likely to than a single tree all by itself.  And it's a lot easier to find the single tree, all by itself, than it is to find the handful of trees amongst the hundreds that might hold bass.  

[Caiden24]

4 minutes ago, Bankc said:

Think of it like this.  If there's only one bar in the town, then everybody in town will go to the same bar.  But if there are thousands of bars in the town, and thousands of people, then there are going to be a lot of empty bars, because most people will want to go to one of the best bars where everyone else is.  So if you're looking for the most people, you either go to the best bars, or somewhere that doesn't have many bars to choose from.  

 

It's the same with structure and cover.  It's not that a tree buried amongst 100 other trees won't have a bass.  It's just less likely to than a single tree all by itself.  And it's a lot easier to find the single tree, all by itself, than it is to find the handful of trees amongst the hundreds that might hold bass.  

Thank you, I was thinking that also but I wanted to see what others would say. 

[geo g]

Isolated cover, or isolated structure although totally different have the same attractive properties.  They are a change from the surroundings.  They provide bass with something the surrounding territory does not.  An example would be it provides an ambush point, a concealment spot, or even just some shade. 

 

1.A rock pile on a big flat may have several bass of similar size holding.  They will come from the featureless surrounding of the flat to this structure.  Early morning, late afternoon it provides shade, and ambush points.

 

2). A ledge provides depth change, water temp  change, and shade depending on the angle of the sun.  A ledge close to cover often provides a resting area close to a hunting ground.

 

3). Cover, I always look for isolated cover for the same reason I look for isolated structure.  They are magnets that draw from featureless surroundings.  If I see a hundred yards of thick pad field, and a Isolated clump separate from the main body I'm always fishing that clump hard first.  That isolated clump may hold more than one bass of similar size.  The large expanse of weeds they could be anywhere.  Bass are not loners all the time, and hang with others.

 

4).Cover with structure can be a gold mine for bass.  Thick weeds close to a drop off is a hunting grounds for bass.  They will move up and down the depth change for just temp changes, and more important the bait will too.  In an early winter they can move down for warmth, and in summer for cooler waters.  In florida we have a aquafer that provides 72* water while the surface may be 90* in summer, and in winter 72* water while the surface temps may be 50*.  Fish will take advantage of these temps!  They will also go where the bait fish go.  These ledges close to cover are a serious feeding grounds.

 

5). If the O2 levels of the water becomes unacceptable to bass they will move into the thick cover that provide O2 to the water from the photosynthesis of the plant life.  This sometime happens in the blazing heat of summer in south Florida.  Bass will seek the shade and O2 exchange.  For me this is flipping time!

 

Just a few observations of bass fishing for 50 years, and what I look for on any new body of water.