"Use patience fishing in grassy
waters."
Author - John E. Brady, Hanover PA-USA
Copyright 2001
e-mail - jeb@jebswebsite.com
Mention the word grass in a conversation with a group of anglers, and you're likely to get mixed reactions. Sometimes even from the same person.
Since the early 70's when grasses such as hydrilla began to grow in abundance in our nations lakes, anglers have had a love hate relationship with it.
I won't go into great detail on all of the specific plants that make up the category, but for those not familiar with the terminology, "grass"is the general term used by anglers for all the types of vegetation found in the water. The basic categories include submergents, such as moss, milfoil and hydrilla; emergents, which include many types of blade grasses and reeds; and floating vegetation, like hyacinths, duckweed, and lily pads.
The love part of the love hate relationship developed by anglers about grass stems from the early studies that proved that in the right lake conditions, fish live almost all their life within some type of vegetation and can be caught there.
The hate side of the equation is from the frustration developed by anglers trying to fish in grass. You can spend more time clearing the stuff from you bait, than you do fishing.
Fishing lures seem to work like magnets around grass. Especially these days with the ultra sharp hooks available on the market. Even if your fishing an area that you don't think has any grass, your likely to hang your lure in it at some point.
Fishing in the grass takes a little knowledge of the different varieties of vegetation and how fish relate to them, and a lot of patience. But taking the time to learn to fish in these areas can develop into proven confidence spots that you will run to as soon as you hit the water.
The reason fish relate to grass is because it contains all the essential ingredients for their survival. Grass attracts food, generates increased oxygen and maintains proper PH from the growth of the grasses, allows for cover from sunlight through the thick growth, and offers cover for prey and predators.
Learning how to fish and catch fish consistently in grass then comes from a balance of using your understanding of the fishes needs for grass habitat as I just described and learning how to use different baits to minimize hang ups in the different types of grasses.
The easiest and least stressful way to fish grass would be to fish on top of it, or on the surface of the water. Use top water baits like buzzbaits, stickbaits and other floating types.
To get down to fish the tops of submerged grass, use shallow running crankbaits, spinnerbaits or soft plastic stickbaits. Vary your retrieve speed until you to find the right depth to fish as deep as possible while minimizing hangups.
For fishing down inside the grass, which is the most challenging, the obvious baits would be those termed weedless. Baits such as spoons and spinnerbaits, with a guarded hook point. The guard can be a piece of wire installed by the manufacturer, or a piece of soft plastic such as a grub or worm rigged to cover the hook point by the angler.
Other successful baits for fishing grass are worms, jigs, and tubes. Rigged with the hook hidden inside the bait, these can be rigged to fish at different levels in the grass from the surface with floating worms, just below the surface with lightly weighted worms and tubes, to down deep in the grass and on the bottom with heavily weighted jigs.
Each type of grass has it's own specific technique that allows you to fish it with minimal hang ups. Although be prepared that even when fishing on the surface where you think you are fishing above the grass, you will get hung up from time to time on some that has grown through to the surface.
Fishing in the grass can make for a very frustrating day of fishing. Time and patience is the key. When you find that school of fish hiding in that certain little spot, you'll be glad you made the effort.
Remember...
"They call it fishing, but the goal is catching!"