What makes a good ledge great?

[carolina-rig-01]

Originally Posted by merc1997

ledges that are good for summer fishing will occur, most of the time where a flat drops off. on many of the tva lakes, the ledges also corrispond with the river channel. what makes a great one. the first thing would be that a big school of bass is using it. stumps or big rocks are a plus. the other important thing is that the break matches up with the depth the fish are preferring. example would be a ledge where the break occurs at 20 ft., but the fish are all wanting to be 15ft. deep. that ledge with the break at 20ft. will usually be pretty fish-less. you always want to find structure that reaches as shallow as the bass may want to be.

bo

That's about as good as anyone can sum it up. I would also add that so much of the time the fish will want to be at the depth where the baitfish are. That sounds pretty obvious but it isn't all that easy. Watch your graphs for balls of baitfish and you will usually notice they are all hanging around the same depth. Say you are seeing the balls of bait in 12-15 feet deep, this is the depth you want to focus your fishing in. The bait balls might be over 50 feet of water, but when you're seeing them all in the same depth you need to focus your fishing at that depth. So then focus on ledges that are around 12-15 feet deep because this is usually the biggest player when considering why the fish want to be a certain depth like Bo said.