Q&A AI
What is the difference between structure and cover?
Absolutely, I'd be happy to clarify the difference between "structure" and "cover" as they are commonly used in bass fishing terminology.
"Structure" refers to the natural contours and features of the lake or river bottom. This includes elements like drop-offs, humps, ledges, points, and creek channels. Essentially, structure is related to the shape and composition of the bottom and can affect water depth and the way water moves around these features. Bass often relate to structure because it can concentrate baitfish and provide pathways for bass to follow.
On the other hand, "cover" refers to objects in the water that bass can use for protection, ambush, and sometimes as a source of food. Cover can be natural, like stumps, fallen trees, vegetation, and rock piles, or man-made, such as docks, bridge pilings, and artificial habitats. Bass use cover to hide from predators, stalk prey, and shield themselves from strong currents or bright sunlight.
To give you an example from the video content provided by The Bass University, Alton Jones talks about fishing the top edge of a point, which is a structure, and how cover like rocks or vegetation can enhance that structure and make it even more attractive to bass. Mark Davis also emphasizes that when talking about deep structure fishing, he's referring to bottom contour changes, not objects like trees, which he classifies as cover.
So, in summary, structure is the bottom layout of the water body, and cover is what's in the water that bass can use for cover. Both are critical to understand for successful bass fishing, as they heavily influence bass behavior and location.
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Cover & Structure Bass Fishing: Alton Jones Keys to Catching More Fish by The Bass University → cover is any kind of object that's there that may enhance that structure and may hold a fish okay structure will hold fish with or without cover may help it but structure will hold fish because structure is usually is usually an edge now um anytime you're thinking about an edge especially of like a drop off or the end of a point always most the time you're going to be fishing this top edge of the point okay when you hear about people structure fishing fishing a deep water hump deep water ledge usually it's that top Edge that's that's really the beat now that doesn't mean fish don't occasionally get out here suspended out off the cover but usually the act of feeding fish are in here we saw that very much with that Smallmouth okay what we found is that uh she would spend most of her day so the the top of the ledge she liked during the during the summer time was about 18 feet deep on the on the top Edge over it okay it dropped off to like 70 out here but she would spend all but a couple of hours of the day the same depth as the top of this ledge 18 feet but she'd be way out over here over this 70 feet of water and you couldn't catch her and you couldn't catch anything else casting at her now when she would move into this ledge she was hungry
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Pond Fishing VS Lake Fishing - Q&A with LakeForkGuy by LakeForkGuy → waters crank baits spinner baits just keep switching it up till you figure it out alright Jack Ellerbee asked can there be a difference between structure and ponds and structure and lakes you know I want to say not not particularly no but like I was saying before usually you're targeting more specific cover that is in ponds versus lakes you know there's there's one little rock over here that's in a pond or there's a whole stretch of Goodreads right here in this lake it's usually more like that when you're talking about structure and maybe we will do a video on this one day you know let me know in the comments structure versus cover but structure is really the same I think for ponds and lakes you know structure is really a point of roadbed you know large obstacles that fish will get around rather than a particular bush or a rock or things like that so those things I think are the same and structure but cover definitely look at differently alright so quintile ODH a sour cream it's a swim baits like Rapala ones as effective as soft rubber baits man that's an interesting question you know I would definitely say that in ponds soft plastics are really effective just because you're usually fishing on the bank you've got a lot of obstacles around things to navigate through get the fish out of and you don't have a
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DEEP Structure BASS Fishing SECRETS! Mark Davis TELLS ALL! by The Bass University → good morning everyone we're gonna talk about deep structure phishing first when I talk about structure I want you to understand that first of all that I'm talking about bottom contour changes you know lot of guys think of structure is a tree well trees cover my definition of cover you know cover is anything that fish can use grass you know wood rock pile of docks you know any kind of stuff except for that we put in the lake or occurs there naturally but we're not talking about structure fishing that we're talking about especially deep structure fishing we're talking about bottom contrary changes we're talking about humps and points and ledges and treat channels and and all there's so many little subtle things out there that you know and we're gonna hit on that a little bit today about what to really look for cuz I mean let me tell you work you know this is my 32nd year of fishing the tour and when I started we didn't have you know Lorentz carbon-12 units we had you know red line flashes and paper maps and it seemed like just a few days ago that you know I was out there with a paper map unfolded we're looking at a red line and flash this chart and I'm and and you handled you had to be able to visualize now what I mean by then it still is very important being able to
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MOST Fisherman Get This WRONG (TOO MUCH COVER) by BassFishingHQ → and a free version and if you're interested in downloading it click that link down below in the description now the first thing that you want to do when you have just a ton of cover is use your electronics to eliminate a lot of that cover now if you do not have electronics i'm going to show you some things that you can do but first of all if you do have some decent electronics the biggest thing that you can do is simply idle through that area and basically what you have to do is act like that cover that you are seeing is not there what you are simply looking for is different structure elements on the bottom and what i mean by structure elements are contour lines i'm looking for drop-offs i'm looking for hump i'm looking for points anything that is a little bit different that is what i'm going to target for example if you look at this giant section of trees most of it is in about 10 to 12 foot of water but if there happened to be a hump right in the middle that was only five foot of water that is something that i would normally target whether the trees were there or not now because the trees are there they just add to that piece of structure so now that tree becomes where that bass is located on the structure this is something that is
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How to Fish Rocks for Bass (Bridges, Gravel, Bluffs, Boulders, & More) with Ott Defoe by The Bass University → thing I you you always need to know as an angler the the definition of cover versus structure and who can tell me exactly what cover is and what structure is the the two difference in the back that I actually could actually I'm going to put raw it's close it's really good it's close but I'm actually gonna put rock as cover as well structure is truly the shape of the bottom okay so the contour is essentially on your on your map that to me is the structure anything else on top of the bottom other than the dirt is gonna be covered you know so if it's pebbles to me that that is even though that's just the bottom makeup if it's a shell bed you know that shells aren't this tall they're not like big sea shells they're just small shells so that anything else to me is gonna be cover and rocks and that that's to me is what a lot of people think they see rocks as being structure not so much as cover and to me that's that's a misconception you know rocks actually are cover with the rocks but they're gonna have a particular many times a particular Roth they feed on in that area and that's that's kind of what this example is here you know there's a lot of a lot of potential cover and it's just like anything else it's just like a mat of
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How to Fish Points - Bass Fishing by Flukemaster → well we talked about um we talked about points of structure you know structure being the way the bottom changes in contour and things like that in places that hold a bass on the due to the shapes and the contours of the bottom now let's talk about points of cover points of cover being you know miles grass lines you know any kind of cover covers you know grass and trees anything a bass can hide inside of is considered cover and what is points of cover well points of cover are parts of of that thick stuff of that cover that sticks out further than air then the rest of them um so right here what I've got is I've got a bunch of these little sick up swell here at about oh seven feet deep or six feet deep I've got more cover that uh that comes out further so I'm working that outside line that outside cuz they're all dead they grew when the lake was down but if this was a grass line I'd be doing the same thing I'd be fishing they happen the grass line and and the key features are that part of the of the of the brush line that sticks out further is what I'm going to make the most cast to pay more attention to than anything else and you know what other things are our points of cover trees that stick out a little bit
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