Ledge Fishing Tips Part 1

I am going to put this up in a 3 or 4 part series because it is a little long. This was written by Dave Stewart and has a lot of great info and I thought you guys would enjoy and maybe learn a little from this. Follow me so you don't miss the rest of this article. Ever wonder why some anglers seem to be consistently successful year round while others do good in the spring and fall but struggle in summer and winter to bring fish to the scales? The most prominent reason for this is that those anglers that are consistently successful have unlocked the key to ledge fishing. Some know it as "drop fishing" and others know it as "ledge fishing" but whatever name you have heard it called, it is the key to being successful on reservoirs during the heat of summer and the cold of winter. What is a ledge? Basically a ledge is a form of structure that can be found at the edge or bank of an old creek channel or the main river channel that remains underwater after the flooding of a reservoir. A quick look at a topographical map of any man made reservoir will show you these old channels. The creek channels will wind their way from the backs of the bays to the old river channel and the main river channel will wind its way thru the reservoir from the headwaters of the lake to the dam. Seasonal fish migration. To understand why ledges produce you must first understand fish migration patterns. Although it is true that there are always some fish shallow as it is true there are always some fish deep, the most successful anglers will fish in depths and locations that are holding the majority of the fish during any one given time of the year. Bass are predatory fish and as such will follow the main source of food which in reservoirs is baitfish with various species of shad being the predominant baitfish in most reservoirs. Thus the majority of the bass in a reservoir will be found near the majority of the food source. Without going into too much detail about why their food sources and water oxygen content cause the shad to move into shallow water in the spring and back out to deeper water in the summer which is repeated again during the fall and winter months, it is easier for our purpose here to just know that this is the seasonal migration pattern for shad and thus for the majority of the bass. Why ledges produce. Migrating fish use the old creek channels in reservoirs as their route or "fish highways" as they travel from shallow to deep water and vice versa. The previous statement is probably the most key knowledge to know and remember to be a consistently successful bass angler. If you give that statement some close observation you will soon realize that except for the few weeks that the majority of the bass are very shallow for spawning , that at any given time, the majority of the bass are going to be very near those migration routes or along those migration routes. This is why you always seem to catch more bass in shoreline areas that are near deep water, hence, you are fishing near a migration route or "fish highway". For example: points, docks, laydowns, vegetation, shoreline stumps, and brush piles that are near deep water are well known hot spots for bass. If you take this knowledge and apply the question as to where are the majority of the bass located when they have migrated to deeper water not near the shoreline then it only makes sense that the deeper fish will use the underwater "shoreline" or ledges that provide a similar environment of cover and structure near deeper water. That all for part 1