Entrances to bays and small cuts through shorelines can havbe fishy low-relief or high-relief ledges.
The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is ledge heaven. The man-made waterway has ledges of almost every description, and they offer good fishing from Maine to Texas. In many places the ICW is a long, straight, dredged waterway that isn’t too appealing to fishermen, but often fish don’t seem to mind and they gravitate to ledges in such places. Where I live in North Florida, one of the most productive redfish ledges runs along a quarter-mile oyster bank that’s as straight as an airport runway. With the tide running parallel to the ICW bank, I’ll use my skiff’s electric motor to make a controlled drift along the ledge, which runs 8 to 12 feet deep. There I fish jigs tipped with shrimp, or with a barrel sinker fishfinder rig baited with a small live mullet or menhaden. When fishing alone I’ll keep the live bait set up in a stern rod holder, while bumping a jig along bottom with another rod. My eyes stay glued to the fathometer so the boat hovers right on the oyster shell ledge. Reds are ridiculously easy to catch this way, and frequently I’ll take flounder, black drum, seatrout and ladyfish, sometimes even sheepshead and baby tarpon.
Quality braided line, with its limited stretch, is a godsend for ledge fishing. Strikes are easy to feel, and hooksets are sure and fast. Also, increased sensitivity for anglers using fast-taper graphite rods makes interpreting bottom contours a snap for those using braid and bottom-bumping lures.
Finally, be aware that ledge fishing success can be seasonal, and it’s certainly affected by tide and current. Catching flounder in autumn during a falling tide along a ledge doesn’t mean you can get flatties there in spring. But there may be spring bluefish available, or Spanish mackerel, and the best tide may be the opposite of the
one for flounder. Simply stated, shallow-water ledges are dynamic fish havens, almost the inshore equivalent to offshore reefs.
