How to Fish Bridges

There are many old sayings in fishing that still ring true and one of those is ‘find the structure, find the fish’. Available structure for anglers includes natural environments such as mangroves, lilies, timber and channel edges, as well as manmade construction such as boat ramps, pontoons, stormwater drains and rock walls. One very productive manmade structure, and the focus of this article, is bridges. I’ll be covering the gear and techniques that consistently get me the bites, while also breaking down the bridge structure and where you should find the fish.

Wherever you find rivers and creeks, you’ll generally find bridges that allow pedestrians, cyclists, cars, trains and other vehicles to travel safely over these waterways. You will often find access points to fish land based around bridges or to launch a kayak or canoe to explore the area further. If you’re new to a system, bridges are a great starting point to find fish because the pylons and other structure that support the bridge also alters the water flow and provides shelter and ambush points for fish.

Eddies and Pressure Points

When approaching bridges, it’s important to think about where the fish might be holding on the pylons and why. As water flows past a bridge pylon, it creates an eddy behind it and this break in flow is where you will often find bait holding, and in turn predators holding and feeding. Working your way along the bridge and fishing the eddies can be very productive, however the water flow also creates another key strike zone, pressure points.

Pressure points will form in front of the pylon, where the water is forced to divert around the structure, before creating an eddy behind it. It’s worth making the occasional cast into the pressure points as we’ve often found bream, trevally, tailor and other species holding and feeding in these areas. As with all angling, fishing bridges is all about cracking the pattern on the day, working out where the fish are holding and what they are feeding on.

Top to Bottom

Pylons provide vertical structure that can make them trickier to fish when compared to a weed or channel edge. It’s important to remember that this vertical structure could hold fish at any depth, so we prefer to vary our retrieves and presentations to fish from the surface to the base of the pylons.

Bridges also offer an incredible mix of species, from bread-and-butter fish such as bream and flathead to pelagic species such as tailor, trevally and mackerel, plus reef varieties such as snapper and sweetlip.

Soft plastics are an effective choice because a single plastic can be rigged on different weighted jigheads to fish the entire depth, with a TT Hidden Weight System jighead an option for targeting bream mooching around the tops of the pylons, increasing the weight to reach the required depths based on the flow, until you can effectively fish the bottom for species such as flathead.

Lifting and lowering the rod tip and increasing and decreasing retrieve speeds can also allow you to adjust the running depth of your presentation to ensure it is in the strike zone when it enters the eddy or pressure point.
End to End

Some bridges will be short with only a handful of pylons, while others will span much larger areas, with rows of structure to explore. It’s important to remember that over the span of the bridge, the environment can change radically, so it’s worth exploring the length of the bridge, particularly if you have a depth sounder and can make a note of water depth, bottom structure, bait and fish. Again, it’s all about cracking the pattern in terms of the species, key bite times and what they’re feeding on.

Certain sections of the bridge may fish better on different stages of the tide and various tide sizes may hold a mix of species and offer many depths for utilising varying techniques. The pylons are the key structure, however, some will hold more fish, and the effectiveness of a particular pylon could be multiplied by its additional marine growth, water depth or proximity to variables such as heavy flow, channel edges or supporting structure, such as weed beds or rubble piles created during the original construction of the bridge and the sinking of the pylons.

Other Variables

A couple of other variables that can dictate what sections of the bridge can be more effective include water quality, shade and wind direction. Across the span of larger bridges, you may encounter varying wind, bottom structure, current and water depth, all of which can alter the water clarity and the amount of suspended sediment. If the bite is not happening, try moving to cleaner or dirtier water, as this can sometimes impact the species holding in the area and how aggressively they’re feeding. Regardless of the type of structure you’re fishing, including mangroves, pontoons and bridges, shade often holds fish.

Maybe predators use these shade areas as an ambush point or perhaps they feel safer holding in the shadows. Regardless, get a cast into the shadowy areas, especially when fishing shallower water, and you may find yourself hooked up. The span of the bridge may also create a defined shadow line on the water, and much like fish feeding around the shadow lines of artificial light at night, during the day you will find fish hunting and holding along the edge of these shadow lines, waiting for baitfish to be disorientated by the changing light and an easy target for predatory species.

Finally, the position of the bridge in relation to wind, sun and flow also often dictates which pylons will hold more fish. You could work your way across the length of a bridge fishing the ocean side pylons without many bites, only to move to the inside pylons and find them stacked with fish, due to one or more of the variables mentioned. So, if the bite isn’t happening, make it happen by switching pylon lines, moving along the expanse of the bridge or varying the depth you’re fishing on the pylons.

Go-To Combos

When it comes to fishing bridges, combo selection will come down to target species, presentation size and the depth and conditions being fished. I primarily have three combos rigged for the bread-and-butter species that I target, such as bream, flathead, tailor and snapper, and will rotate through these based on the type of fishing I’m doing and the key target species.

Light
A 7’0” 1-3kg spin rod and 1000 reel loaded with 6lb braid and 10lb leader is great fun for delivering lighter presentations, including jigheads to around 1/20oz to 1/8oz. This is my go-to combo when targeting bream, and you may find yourself doing some fancy rod work if a trevally or larger predator decides to eat your presentation.

Medium Light
A 7’0” 2-4kg spin rod and 2500 reel loaded with 8-10lb braid and 10-12lb leader is a great all-rounder for fishing the river and estuary, including bridge fishing. I use this combo to cast plastics on jigheads to about 1/4oz, as well as fishing blades and small vibes. This combo will handle most species encountered when fishing bridges.

Medium
A 7’0” 3-6kg spin rod and 2500-3000 reel loaded with 10-15lb braid and 10-20lb leader will handle a lot of the heavier work, including fishing deeper water with jigheads to 3/8oz and working larger soft vibes. I use this combo mostly for fishing the deeper channel sections that the bridge spans and when targeting larger species such as snapper and mulloway.

Target species and lure presentation will generally dictate the combo selected and you may need to upsize the setup based on this, however these three have served me well when fishing bridge structure for commonly targeted species.

Go-To Presentations

There is a stack of lure presentation types that are effective when fishing bridges, however I wanted to touch on a couple of my proven favourites. The environment can change dramatically when fishing bridges, including the depth, current, target species and where they’re holding. Consequently, I love the versatility of soft plastics, and that by changing the weight of the jighead, I can fish the same plastic throughout the entire water column. So, let’s start with plastics.

Often, you’ll find a concentration of small baitfish holding around the pylons. My favourite imitation is a ZMan 2.5” Slim SwimZ, a small baitfish profile with loads of action that appeals to a wide range of species. Prawns frequently hold around bridges, with my go-to being the ZMan 2.5” PrawnZ, and if prawns are active in the system, everything will eat this bite-sized snack. Another proven bite-size snack is the ZMan 2.5” GrubZ, which I use when fishing slower and deeper, and it has caught an incredible number of species.

I fish these 2.5” plastics on a size 1 or 1/0 TT jighead, with 1/20oz, 1/8oz and 1/4oz weights carried as a minimum, which will cover bream mooching around the tops of the pylons to a slow fall for a mix of species and a heavier head to get down to the base of the pylons in reasonable depth and flow.

When the bait is larger, it’s hard to beat the proven ZMan 3” MinnowZ and 4” StreakZ Curly TailZ for versatility. Rigged on a 1/8oz 3/0 TT HeadlockZ HD jig head for shallow water, stepping to a 1/4oz and 3/8oz as the water gets deeper or the flow increases.

Another favourite for fishing bridges is the TT Quake Vibe, with the 50mm a favourite for bream, 60mm for a mixed bag of species and the 75mm and 95mm a favourite for snapper, mulloway and threadfin salmon, especially with increased depth and flow. These can be cast and retrieved or fished vertically close to structure and when targeting bait balls and schooled fish.

Bridges have a stack of ingredients that fish find attractive, and they are a great starting point for anglers looking to target a variety of species on lures. Remember to make note of the primary and secondary structure, water flow, shade and bait. Explore the entire span of the bridge to locate variations in structure, flow, depth and water clarity, to put the pieces of the jigsaw together and crack a pattern at different stages of the tide. You never know what species you may encounter when lure fishing bridges. Fish on!

See you on the water…
Justin Willmer