by Bruce Middleton, February 25, 2008

Different types of weeds demand different fishing approaches…


Up here in the Pacific Northwest we have basically six types of weeds that inhabit our lakes. Each type of weed has its own growth habits and therefore demands a different approach to fishing in and around them. The six types of weeds are Lily Pads, Reeds and cattails, Milfoil, Pondweed and Curly Leaf Pondweed. While other weeds exist to some degree in our lakes like Hydrilla, Hyacinth, and Blatterwort, they are all found is small amounts that don’t normally cause fishermen any problems as they are too small or they live in warmer climes. But the six main weeds each hamper fishermen to a large degree and we are forced to work with them or around them. So it is important to know how to identify each type of weed because like Milfoil it is spreading through out our lakes and the State is trying to controls its spread. So it is important that you be able to identify it so you aren’t an offender.

Lily pads are very common in the lakes up here and they can grow in scattered patches or they can grow in mounded up piles of leaves and flower stalks so dense you could practically walk on them. Bass love to hide under lily pad fields. They offer shade and protection from above while being fairly open underneath. But for the angler these weeds can be a real challenge to fish.

Now fishing around the outsides of the fields and in and through the isles and indentations is a common practice as well as fishing the holes in the field. Dropping jigs, plastics and plastic frogs into open holes is a sure way of dropping an enticement down to any bass they’re waiting for a meal to pass by. Spinner baits, buzz baits, top water lures and plastic frogs are used around the pads and in the indentations with great success.


The weed Milfoil that grows around here is a noxious weed that can stay alive out of the water for up to a week or more. The state of Washington has bulletin boards set up at most every lake with a launching ramp telling you to check for any of this weed hanging on the boat or trailer. They don’t want this weed to spread any more than it already has. Milfoil is a long length central vine that has leaves all along its length. It can grow in water up to 15 feet deep if the water is clear. It is a real nuisance to anglers as it fouls our treble hooks with shreds of its leaves. It was accidentally introduced into North America from Europe and had steadily spread across the nation since then. It looks a lot like horsetail, a dry land weed that once established is all but impossible to eradicate. Milfoil is just as hard to kill.

The state of Washington is actively trying to remove or kill off this weed. It offers chemicals and chemical information on several websites for waterfront homeowners to use for the control of this weed. But as fishermen we are forced to fish in and around it. We are limited to jigs and plastics to fish in it and top water lures to fish on top of it. We can use lipless crank baits to rip across the tops of the weeds or we can use Poppers or Chuggers to imitate a wounded baitfish to keep above the top growth of this and other weeds. A lot of anglers use soft jerk baits with great success and they can sometimes use the hard jerk bait counter part depending on the height of the weeds verses the top of the water. Bass use this weed to hide in and to hunt in. To them it is a giant forest and they are the top predator in it. But like all active bass they often are near the top of the weeds when actively feeding and down at the bottom when inactive.

The next weeds are Cattails and reeds. Both have reed stalks and for our purposes the reed stalks are the same thing. Bass love reeds for several reasons. One, they are very dense but easy to swim around in. The stalks stand up high above the water line and offer great protection from above. But reeds have a thermal effect that really makes them loved by bass. In the summer the reed stalks will wick off excess heat from the water making the water cooler in summer and in spring and fall the reeds act as heaters, drawing in any heat the sun has to offer and transferring it down into the water. This warms the water faster or keeps the water warmer during sudden cold snaps.

Now fishing in reeds is a real chore. The reed stalks seem to jump out and grab any lure that gets thrown into them. Even single hook lures rigged weedless have a time of it sometimes. This leaves us fishing these reeds with snag free rigged plastics and snag free frogs. It just is hard to fish it with any of these things but luckily reeds only grow close to the shore so we don’t have too much trouble with them. Bass must be very shallow indeed to be in reeds. They can be spotted and cast directly to so as to eliminate wasted casts. Because the water is so shallow around these stalks you often spook bass when your lure lands near them. For this reason it is prudent to leave the bait or frog there for a long time so the bass has time to settle down and then investigate the bait. I often use a dragonfly floating plastic bait here but it is more like fly-fishing than it is casting. But the bass love dragonflies and will come around after it.

The next weed is the Cow lily. It is a Lily pad looking weed that never seems to get quite as thick as lily pads. It has an elongated spear like leaf and they have a habit of growing close to shore in water that is usually less than 10 feet deep. Other than lily pads this is the most common weed that has leaves that float on the surface. They are sometimes mistaken for lily pad leaves by beginning anglers but the shape is wrong and the leaves are too small. These weeds probably offer the most bass per square yard than any other part of the lake habitat. Few if any good anglers can fish a long stretch of these weeds and not get a strike.

They grow in thin small patches or they can cover an entire cove with their leaves. The flower stalks come and go in the summer very quickly and are not of much consequence.

The growth habit of this weeds varies from scattered patched to fields so thick you have to use a jig to punch threw the leaf cover. They grow next to the shoreline anywhere there aren’t any houses that have cleaned them out. These weeds attract bass like nothing else. Because of the weeds habit of having large indentations in it, often reaching the shore, bass have a huge area to search for food in and use as ambush spots. You can use just about any lure you want to when fishing these weeds. The key here is to stay in the clear areas and not get hung up in the vines or leaves. For this reason, most amateur anglers fish these weeds with spinner baits, buzz baits, single hook soft jerk baits and plastic frogs. I prefer frogs, as they never seem to fail me in these weeds.

One key factor in using a plastic frog is to cast it to the back of an indentation or all the way to shoreline if you can and then move the frog one of two inches at a time adding pauses all the while. I use frogs with lifelike legs rather than the tassel like legs. That way when I move the frog it looks like it is really kicking as it swims. It is that added bit of realism that has made my fishing these weeds so successful with a frog. Also when a bass does strike your frog, you have plenty of time to reel down on him and set the hook with great leverage. A bass will fight for up to 30 seconds just holding the frog and not being hooked. So you can see you have lots of time. Just ensure you set the hook really hard and then never give the bass any slack to play with. Use scent too as this will make the bass hold on even longer.

The last two weeds are Pond Weed and Curly Leaf Pond weed. Curly Leaf Pondweed is what a lot of people call cabbage up here. This weed generally grows to a height of about seven or eight feet or so. Curly Leaf Pondweed is a low growing weed but where it is established no other weed grows inside the patch. It is a fast growing weed that has leaves that look a bit like lasagna noodles with a wide and curly leaf. This weed grows in shallow water, usually in about 2 to 12 feet deep depending on the clarity of the water. It however doesn’t generally break the surface of the water unless the lake water falls drastically. This is a real nuisance weed and forces fishermen to fish on top of it more than they do down in it.

Pond Weed is really bad weed to fish around. It has a medium height growth habit but remains under the water in the submergence zone. It sometimes is confused with Milfoil but if you look at the two pictures you will see they look nothing alike.

Pondweed is a real nuisance to fishermen. It can grow in water up to ten feet deep and grows to eight feet high. It is usually found in great fields that can cover an entire lake bottom. And like Milfoil it can choke out other weeds and clog the lake from the shoreline out to deep water.

Milfoil and Curley Leaf Pondweed are two weeds we fishermen can do without. Some small lake are so clogged with one or both of these weeds that they are virtually impossible to fish.
All these weeds and reeds form three distinct zones in the watery world of all lakes.




The Littoral zones as they are called, are the emergent zone where reeds and cattails can establish themselves, the floating leaf zone where lily pads and cow leaf plants grow and the submergent zone where those plants that never break the surface of the water live like Curly leaf Pondweed. Another zone exists but it is the rest of the lake where algae and diatoms live. But these are so small as to be inconsequencal.

Weeds are the grass and trees of the water world. In this forest the weeds feed all sorts of small life such as tiny invertebrates, snails and other water borne insects, other critters and algae. They are the bottom of the food chain. They take in weed matter and algae and turn it into protein just like animals that graze on dry land. They live in the billions just so a few can survive and reproduce. This is because larger creatures feed on them like crawfish and fish fry. They in turn are fed on by baitfish, a great but tiny predator in its own right. These baitfish are then fed on by the top predator the bass. The bass excrement fertilizes the weeds and this forms the circle of life in a fresh water lake.

Now it is a known fact that a bass will normally live within 300 yards of where it spawns. After spawning the bass moves to its summer home and lives there until the fall cold water turn over when those bass that are shallow are forced out into the open lake where they suspend until enough oxygen is produced by what little greenery is left, so they can swim back into the flats to feed. It is also known that a large enough weed bed can hold up to 80% of all the bass in a lake. So these weed beds make a perfect summer home for the bass that is well within their spawning bed range. It does make a difference however, which type of weeds the bass prefer. Curley Leaf Pondweed is often to dense growing to be of much use to the bass except as a hunting ground cover. Crawfish use it to hide under but I’m sure a bass can detect them even in this type of cover. Reeds and cattails are other weeds that a lot of bass don’t use just because it lives in such shallow water. Now this doesn’t mean that all bass don’t use it, just a few. But the majority of bass are found in, under and around lily pads, cow lilies and Pondweed. Both lily pads and cow weed offer shade with their leaves and that is what attracts the most bass to them. It is also a known fact that most bass live, in the summer, in less than 15 feet of water. This is well within the growing range of both of these weeds. Pondweed is open enough for the bass to easily get around in and hunt in. It also never seems to grow so dense so as to inhibit the movements of the bass but it does offer good cover for them.

At the height of summer when the sun is really beating down and the bass are looking for shade most anglers believe that the bass go to the center of the lily pads and weed fields where it would seem cooler. But the opposite is true. It is actually hotter under the canopy of leaves and there is less oxygen to boot. This forces most bass to move to the outside edges of the fields where it is more comfortable for them and has more oxygen. This is just fine with most bass anglers as this is a much better place for them to fish verses trying to plow a one ounce jig head through the canopy of leaves just to get under them to the more open areas below. Fishing the edges also means the use of a lot more types of lures and baits you can use to catch these wily bass.

Bass relate to the edge of vegetation. It’s a great place for them to hide and ambush prey. Under normal circumstances, those fish found near the top of the water column will be active feeders and will be hunting. Those fish in the middle of the water column are inactive fish and will only feed infrequently. Those fish on the bottom of the water column will be resting and normally will not bite. Go for top and middle fish around the edges of vegetation.

These weed beds also help the bass evade such predators as walleye and pike to name a few. Most of these fish are open water species while the bass is a shallow cover fish. But in lakes where the bass is not the top predator you will find that for the most part the bass are found in much shallower water than in lakes where they are the top predator.

When it comes to fishing in these weeds for bass it is important to remember a couple of facts. That is because it is summer and summer is the hardest time to fish for bass. You have to work harder and be more patient that any other time of year except maybe winter. One key is to use the sun to your advantage. Bass are most aggressive in the morning and evening in summer and eat large amounts of food at this time and at night. They like to hunt in the low light levels and not the glaring mid afternoon sun. During mid day you have to switch to ambush lures just like the bass switch to ambush feeding. Hiding in shadows and streaking out for a kill and quickly returning to the shadows again. So you have to focus on habitat that offers shade from the sun and a slow appetizing meal the bass will snatch. This calls for crank baits, spinner baits and jerk baits. But remember that top water lures work all day long and the use of poppers, chuggers and spitters are always a good way to fish for summer bass.

We know that top water lures can be used all day long with great success. Working over the tops of weeds during the day is one strategy. Working them only at dusk and dawn is another. But anyway you cut it weeds hold a very large number of bass. And if you want to catch these bass then you are going to have to go in there and get them.

Bruce Middleton

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