Fishing structure and current

A piling, a rock pile, or a wreck matters to a fish because of what the water does around it: it speeds up along the sides, slows down behind, and drops bait into the slow water. Fish sit in the slow water facing the current and eat what comes past. Without current, the same structure is just a place for bait to hide — which is why a moving tide matters more at the bridges and inlets than which way it is moving.

Watch the water for a minute. The seam where fast water meets slow water down-current of a piling or rock is the line to fish. Cast up-current of the structure and let the bait or jig sink and swing back through the seam. A jig swept naturally past a piling gets bitten; one dragged straight against the current mostly does not. When the tide turns, the slow water moves to the other face of the structure, and so should you.

Sheepshead, tautog, and black drum feed on the barnacles, mussels, and crabs growing on the structure itself. For them the bait has to touch the piling or the rock; a foot away is too far, and the bite is a soft pressure rather than a pull. Flounder and striped bass sit a little farther off — on the sand at the base of the pilings, on the drop-off beside a rock pile, or in the shadow line.

Bridges and lit piers throw a hard line between light and dark water at night. Striped bass and trout hold on the dark side and take bait drifting through the light, so cast into the lit water and retrieve across the line. In daylight, depth does the same job: fish drop from the shallow face of a piling to its deeper base as the sun climbs, and come back up as the light fades.