Fishing Tip: Structure is the key

Fish aren’t dissimilar to humans. We both covet a destination, a shopping centre with a grocery store, somewhere to score something to eat and hang out, plus a roof over our heads at the end of the day.

Find the structure and you will find the action. This is a catchphrase we hear often in fishing circles. But what does fish-holding structure look like?

It can be natural, man-made, solid or soft. It can be a habitat as much as a happy hunting ground. It is also a place fish call home and somewhere transient they visit when looking for a takeaway meal.

Tides play a big part with fishing structure, as does water flow in general. Each location fishes in its own peculiar way and that is something you need to get wired over time by trial and error.

But fish-holding structure is also universal and, on a large body of water, all good anglers know where to begin their hunt simply by surveying the lay of the land and flow of the water.

Of course, a depth sounder or fish finder (as marketeers like to call them) is an essential piece of kit when looking for structure below the surface. But there’s a lot you can glean by simply looking at the shore.

In the photo above taken on Brisbane Water just north of Sydney there are five key spots to find fish. This writer succeeded in doing just that at every one of them as some point in time.

Can you identify the hot fishing spots ain the photo above? They are both boat-accessible and for the shore-based and there is somewhere worth fishing at every stage of the tide.

OK. Here they are: oyster leases, sandy drop-off just outside them, rocky foreshore behind, bridge pylons (and deep hole in the main channel if you have a sounder), and the wharf in the distance.

The shallow spots fish best around the top of the tide, the drop-offs are best on the falling tide when the fish were pulling back off the shallows, and the deep hole and bridge fishes very well at night on the slack water and around the change of the tide.

Look for the structure, work it with your lures and baits, and you will catch more fish than aimlessly casting willy-nilly and wherever.
– David Lockwood.