The Spoonpluggers Forum

In addition to watching the Breakline webinars and Jim's Structure Fishing show, I'm trying to research (other than YouTube videos) what is available pertaining to structure fishing... below is a link to a structure fishing guide (dated from 2000), that the very first paragraph references Buck Perry and provides numerous diagrams with detailed explanations:
https://www.fishnmap.com/structured/Str ... -Guide.pdf

No author is listed and up to a four concept (poor, fair, good, excellent) breakdown of a type of structure but the different situations associated with why you should or should not fish them is specific to the diagram. I would think that a poor/fair rock reef is where you would want to fish in a winter / late spring colder water condition as opposed to during the summer, so there would be exceptions to the way that they identify the best issues with structure to look for when out fishing. There are also several references to "trout", so I think that is the fish species they are "targeting" but would still be applicable to any other species of fish like bass, crappie, walleye, pike, musky, etc.

The diagrams seemed to be educational to me, since I'm not looking at the screen on a depth/fish finder, that would depict the actual structural situation being experienced to what is similar in the diagrams.

Hope after you check it out that you can provide your opinion about anything that is incorrect so it will avoid confusion when out on the water trying to find a similar situation, or even just reviewing a contour map to try and match a plotted mapping structural condition prior to going fishing and then check it out ? Thanks for your help with this.

Musky Joe,

Best advice I can give you is to use your time to study Mr. Perry's written material. The "Green Book" and the "Home Study Course" has all the structure information that we need. There is a small booklet from nsoa.info, "Structure Situation Guide" for $6.00 plus shipping that has all of the 17 structure situations that exist; order it to supplement your other Spoonplugging material. The guide is a bargain and it was written by Mr. Perry and is used in the Spoonplugging classes.

Good Fishing,
TN Dave

TN Dave offers sound advice! Absolutely no value in reading material that is modified by the author regarding Mr. Perry's work. This would only lead you down a path to nowhere.

I looked the guide over and it looks pretty good. Some of the definitions are off,(refer to Green Book). I would say that the guide is for the warmer periods like summer. The steep areas classified as poor might be used during the coldest period.
I did not study each situation, but did find the breaks and breaklines situations with a thermocline questionable.
I will look at it some more. Thanks for the link.

Hi ltharley: With the Buck Perry Spoonplug guide (Figure 4/page 15) pertaining to a steep, deep shoreline with an upper/shallower migration during early/colder parts of the year (as you stated it is referenced in the book) is the reason I posted it (since that aspect was not addressed with that associated diagram in the link) and hoped that others would contribute an "incorrect" or "missing concept" so I could learn from their knowledge/experience spoonplugging. Even comparing the breakdown/diagrams in the link to the Buck Perry Spoonplug guide is why I have some confusion as to how "accurate" their breakdown is, based on their explanation for the structural situation/fish location.Thanks for your help!

Appears to be just another muzhik trying to cash in on what Buck studied, learned, and wrote about. Don't remember anything in the green book that matches what the article called "Fishing Strategies". He is partially correct in his definition of a thermocline. A "cline" is a line, and the authors of several limnology books refer to the thermocline as a plane. Look up pycnocline in google.