Fishing Cover vs. Fishing Structure

Structure = The framework of a body of water. It is the bottom surface.

Why is Structure important?

Structural Features are created by substantial changes in topography (depth). These are features like drop-offs and creek channels that serve as a map that fish use to navigate.

Cover = Objects that exist on that surface. (Weeds, Rocks, Timber, Docks, etc.)

Why is Cover Important?

A cover is an object like rocks, docks, and lily pads that serve as a refuge for prey.

The cover also serves as an ambush area for predators.

The cover is where bait and fish are most likely to meet. Therefore, you want to be in or near that action.

Consider a house as both cover and structure

The house’s framework is made up of walls and floors (Structure) and on that surface are objects like furniture and appliances (Cover).

Part of the talk of today’s pond management is about adding fish attractors to fishing lakes and ponds.

People are truly learning about the value of habitat improvement.

However, there seems to be some confusion about semantics and describing different elements of habitat.

Most pond owners want to add attractors, but before we can even discuss attractors, a pond manager should understand the words structure and cover.

The structure is defined as the shape of the bottom of a lake – the permanent features. It’s the gradual, more rapid, and near-vertical changes in depth.

It’s the humps, the old river or creek bottoms and edges, the underwater bars, underwater points, and bluffs.

These depth changes are identifiable on any underwater contour map and tend to form the underwater highways and feeding and breeding flats used by fish.

Some ponds and lakes have lots of structure.

Others, little dish bowls with dams, have very little. Little structure means little bottom information about where fish are likely to feed, travel, hold, and breed.

Thus, understanding structure is key to anticipating fish positions during feeding, spawning, and inactivity— when they are suspended or otherwise holding tight.

Increased structural diversity is beneficial as it provides more usable habitat and likely feeding areas, thus increasing the overall productivity of ponds and lakes. We all seem to strive for better productivity.

The cover is just what its name implies; it provides cover, typically for smaller prey.

Cover protects prey from larger predators, especially adult bass, crappie, and larger catfish, or in northern waters, smallmouth bass.

Small, non-pelagic prey, such as bluegill, prefer to hide in cover and live most of their lives near cover so as to readily escape being eaten.

While pelagic fish such as threadfin shad live mostly in open water, shad will come to shoreline cover to spawn and sometimes to seek food available on surfaces of cover objects.

Cover is also home and protection for most insect larvae, invertebrates, and other tiny foods small fish must have to eat.

Abundant cover, particularly along shorelines, is necessary to maximize the food chain, and thus maximize pond and lake productivity. Aquatic vegetation can be categorized as cover.

Larger game fish are attracted to and hunt near cover—because that’s where the non- pelagic prey is usually found.

When pond managers insert cover, they insert objects to protect and attract prey, and thus also attract larger fish.
Unfortunately, the use of the term fish attractors tends to obscure the importance of cover to productivity.

Cover placed in ponds has two functions: to provide a safe haven for small fish and to provide a good source of food for those small fish.

Studies have shown underwater brush, piles of old wood, bricks, rocks, tires, man-made cover, and practically any old thing may create fish attractors that will help anglers catch fish.

Depth is an important variable. Shoreline cover should protect the smallest prey from larger predators, offer a few potential ambush points to predators, or protect fish nests from nest raiders.

Some deeper cover should offer hiding places to smaller fish at times when shallows are too warm, or in late fall and winter.

Deeper cover may also attract crayfish as potential prey. Other deep cover simply offers larger fish places to rest while inactive.

In larger ponds and lakes, those with pelagic prey fish like threadfin shad, deep piles of cover may offer predators safe areas from which to range out into more open water in search of shad schools.