Summer 2025
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Structure refers to geographical attributes of a body of water. Typical “structures” include rock piles, humps, saddles, ridges, valleys, creek beds, roadbeds, drop-offs, and other features that change the bottom contours. Bass use structure in a variety of ways. Schools of baitfish may swim along the bottom until they come to a hump at which time the school’s direction is diverted upward. Just on the other side of the hump or ridge a big bass could be waiting to easily ambush the prey. Structure also creates current that bass utilize to their feeding advantage.
Cover refers to places where bass and prey can hide (and feed). Weed beds are cover, as are docks, tree laydowns, pilings, channel markers, and anything else resting on the bottom or floating above. During the summer, weed beds probably play the most important role in concentrating 90-percent of the feeding bass in 10-percent of the water.
Understanding and recognizing structure and cover helps narrow your choices to quickly find the feeding bass which are all about the food. Finding cover adjacent to good structure can become a dynamite spot during the summer.
During a Northwest Bass Championship on the Columbia River in Washington State, my partner and I found such a spot. It was a weed bed in the center of the river, and below the weed bed was a rock bar where the shallow rocky flat dropped into a deeper hole. During pre-fish the river was flowing hard, and the bass were in the middle of the weed cover where we caught bass on small chrome jerkbaits that imitated shad. The weed bed was the 10-percent of the water holding 90-percent of the fish.
WHEN THE SPOT MOVES
Once the tournament started the river flow was greatly reduced, and the bass moved out of the weed bed. The spot was no longer good. Knowing they wouldn’t go far we moved a little down current to where the rock flat dropped into deeper water. Here, we again found the bass holding on that drop-off structure where they were feeding on crawfish. Over two days we averaged 22-pounds per day on one spot and won the championship. When water conditions rose the next week, you couldn’t buy a bass from that rock drop-off.
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