It's gone!

[CHM]

What happened to all the curly leaf cabbage??? Many years ago my favorite lakes had forests of cabbage - you could see the tops of it in 14 - 16 feet of water. Now there is just sparse grass from the pencil reeds out to deep water. It's just gone. This is on four of my favorite lakes.

[Deitz Dittrich]

CHM- If your talking about curly leaf pond weed, it always starts to die right around the 2nd week of july, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, but seems right about mid july it starts to die... By now it should be all gone, and when it dies, it usually creates quite an algae bloom, and in that process, it greens up the water pretty bad and kills of quite a few other weeds as well.

I am not a big fan of CLPW...

[Craigums]

This could be an interesting thread!

What are your favorite types of vegetation to look for bass in, (you mentioned your not a fan of the CLPW) Does anyone have pictures they could post of various vegetation that is indiginous to MN?

[Cecil]

This is a BAD year for weed growth as well. Weedlines and weed flats that are normally there never really got going due to the late spring. That seemed to make all of the fish school up into areas that did have the good weeds this year. Odds are it will be there again next year unless we have another cold spring.

[Cecil]

I'm a coontail fan myself. If you can find good deep "clumpy" coontail, there will be fish there sometime. Also, given the amount of milfoil in most lakes it's hard not to like fishing that. It can be a little more difficult but it holds a lot of fish.

Here's a good site:

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/DG6955.html

[Deitz Dittrich]

The link that Cecil posted is very good...

as for weeds I like.. All of them except CLPW.. LOL... What I dont like about it.. It seldom has an edge, it just kind of filters off. Its very thin with a ton of stalks and doesnt really matt up. So its near impossible to fish in or through. You can only pretty much fish over it, and if they fish arent in a up feeding mood, then rats, no good!..

I love deep coontail, milfoil can be good as well.. Love pads.. love pencil reeds, rushes, LOVE CANE!!!!

[JimBuck]

+1 for pads

+1 for pencil reeds

+50 bonus for pads next to pencil reeds!

I've caught more fish on the border of two types of vegetation than any other year...

[Pherris]

I was listening to Mark Fisher last summer on Bear Facts and Fish Tales and he mentioned that bass do not like CLPW and will only use it for cover if nothing else is available. I prefer coontail and rocks. Good Fishing!!

[JConrad]

Up in my area if I can find nice clean cabbage and coon tail together on a deep hard edge it will more than likely hold a good number of fish....both bass and walleye...

With the long cold winter last year and the heavy rains this spring we have a whole diffent weed thing going this year. Where I found nice cabbage in some areas the last few years we have a nasty grassy weed....I think it's because of the heavy rain and the fertilizers that people are using around the lake... NOT GOOD!!!

Some great fall fishing is coming up soon as the days and nights get cooler and cooler...

Curly leaf pond weed is not a good weed......

[MinnesotaMongo]

I just LOVE cabbage weed. Love it - love it - love it.

Pull a jig worm through that - TINK - another fish.

Man, I miss that stuff.

[moviking]

Down here in MO. when the weeds start to die out we get clumps of weeds that the bass hang out in on the flats during the fall. Don't know what kind of weeds they are, but the fish really like them. We can get some real nice fish in those weeds, (3-6#'s) come on cool water

[CHM]

Deitz - I'm pretty sure the stuff I am talking about is claspingleaf (Richardson) pondweed. The leaves are much larger than CLPW. Does all pondweed die out? I just never saw much this year around Alex.

I found bass in some deep coontail last night...jigworm was doing fine! I also found some fish in the rushes that were all over the swimmming jig.

How would you guys fish a lake that is a very sharp drop? I'm talking cliff here. I was 20' from the rushes in 30' of water!

[polarsusd81]

CHM - My first choice in that situation would be a lipless rattle bait (Red Eye Shad) if the fish are suspended. A quick check of the electronics can give you a hint on that. If they are deep, a jig worm would be tough to beat in my opinion. But then again, I have been wrong before.

[CHM]

Good idea Tom. I actually thought of the Red Eye or a short arm spinnerbait. One think I noticed - I went to heavier jigheads and started getting more and bigger bass. I think the 1/8th dropped too slow and allowed the small fish to pick it up before it got down to the larger fish. My electronics on the bow are not very good so it was tough to see what is there.

Funny - while looking for a 1/4 oz mushroom head all I found was a two color green/chart. I threaded on a 7" pink worm and caught bass on that ugly rig!

[Wayne Ek]

CHM. Most of the lakes that had Richardson pondweed still have it. Because of the late spring it never seemed to develope a deep weed line. But I'm still finding it in that 8 to 11 foot range, and the buds are sticking out of the water now.

[Scott M]

Redtops or Richardson's Pondweed, White Stem, Illinois, and Variable leaf (Large Leaf) Pondweed , the greener and bigger the leaves, the better.

I've seen fish that relate to hard bottom flats with eelgrass and water star grass...the grassier the better.

All vegetation can serve a purpose, even exotics can provide useful habitat. Eurasian often grows in deep spots where other natives can't reach or in sediments that are challenging for native plants. Curlyleaf is one of the first plants up in early spring and provides some of the best early green weed fishing. It's finding the right volume and density of narrowleaf and grassy plants when habitat conditions aren't ideal that is important IMO.