Ledge Fishing Tips Part 3

Fishing the ledges. Probably the biggest adjustment you have to learn to make when fishing the ledges is getting used to the fact that you are sitting in open water with the shoreline as much as hundreds of yards away. Although techniques used fishing a ledge are very similar to "pounding the banks" and in many cases exactly the same, some people have a problem at first with not having a shoreline to reference their cast and cannot visualize the spot they are fishing. One of the things you can do to help you with this is to use "markers" to outline the area you are fishing. These "markers" are commercially available in most sporting goods stores and are no more than a floating piece of plastic with a string wrapped around it and a piece of lead weight attached to the tag end of the string. You can drop these "markers" along the area you are going to fish and even outline the area such as a point or cut to give you a visual reference. Another thing that will help you is to make good notes of the information you gathered when first checking the spot with regard to things like where on the ledge the cover is located or is it a gradual slope etc. Once you become familiar with a certain spot and get comfortable with offshore ledge fishing you will find that you will use the markers less and less. Just as with fishing shoreline spots you will also find that there are techniques that work better than others at certain times and that there are patterns that work better than others at different times. An example of different techniques used at certain times that is very similar to shoreline fishing would be that you may find that early in the morning and late in the evening that the fish are more active on the top of the ledge in shallower water and will take topwater baits and shallow running baits. Just like on the shoreline you will find in many cases that as the sun gets higher and the day progresses the fish will move deeper on the ledges just as they will move deeper on the points along the shoreline and you will have to fish deeper using deep diving crankbaits, Carolina rigs, Texas rigs, etc. to adjust to the depth of the holding fish. You may also find that the ledge fish may be holding in cuts more than on points or they may prefer ledges of rock bottom over gravel just as patterns will differ if fishing the shoreline areas. Another key to successful ledge fishing is current. Ledge fish have a tendency to be much more active when there is current present either from wind or from water being pulled through the dam. Although I am not really sure why this is true, I believe it is because current causes the microscopic food that the bait fish feed on to be swept along and the baitfish get more active in feeding and in turn this gets the bass more actively feeding on the baitfish. Whatever the reason, you can bet that if you are fishing a ledge and there is current on it that the fish will be more active than if there is no current present. An important point to remember when fishing a ledge with current on it is that the fish will face into the current and many times be behind a current break such as the down current side of a point or stump and you should position your boat and present your lure accordingly.