Identifying Grass

[Team9nine]

11 minutes ago, Paul Roberts said:

The two major fishing weeds where I live are milfoil and coontail. Both hold fish but milfoil is easier to fish, being more brittle and less dense. Milfoil also needs a lot of light (more than coontail), so milfoil tends to die back underneath leaving space for bass to move and hunt. When water levels drop in summer the milfoil canopy collapses creating great mat fishing. During dark overcast summers, milfoil dies back and coontail takes over. Coontail is denser and can mat too, but often too densely IME.

 

Great post. Agree with everything above, except possibly what your definition of "brittle" entails. My experience is that milfoil is like a wet noodle that drapes and collapses over baits and can be hard to snap off with rod and reel, whereas coontail is much more crisp, a lot like cabbage, and it therefore seems baits can be snapped free easier and more frequently.

[A-Jay]

23 minutes ago, Paul Roberts said:

The two major fishing weeds where I live are milfoil and coontail. Both hold fish but milfoil is easier to fish, being more brittle and less dense. Milfoil also needs a lot of light (more than coontail), so milfoil tends to die back underneath leaving space for bass to move and hunt. When water levels drop in summer the milfoil canopy collapses creating great mat fishing. During dark overcast summers, milfoil dies back and coontail takes over. Coontail is denser and can mat too, but often too densely IME.

 

Agreeing with @Paul Roberts  and @Team9nine here.  And the First & last green of the season is almost always money.

I'll add that at certain times of the year Cabbage Weed here is a great place to find some stout bass.  (Can also be a Pike Magnet, but you gotta take the good with the bad I guess.)  And although the pic below designates it as "The Best weeds" and it can be - it's often a little easier to fish.  This becomes prime time for me when there are "patches" of this growing on a hard bottom with some open water between them - not too much, but just enough to allow me to pull along a swimbait, swim jig, chatterbait or zip a spinnerbait or shallow crank (usually squarebill) or the best case scenario - Lippless bait ripped along the edges - catching a bit here & there - and then ~ BOOM ! 

 If the horizontal presentation isn't getting bit and a I need to go vertical - 90% of the time it's one of these

 

 

A-Jay

[Paul Roberts]

21 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

 

Great post. Agree with everything above, except possibly what your definition of "brittle" entails. My experience is that milfoil is like a wet noodle that drapes and collapses over baits and can be hard to snap off with rod and reel, whereas coontail is much more crisp, a lot like cabbage, and it therefore seems baits can be snapped free easier and more frequently.

I know what you mean about noodles and crispness. Milfoil stems are the noodles, but their leaves are pretty fragile. Those thick stems though are solid enough to "walk" crankbaits over, which is helpful. Coontail here can be so dense though I simply have to fish the outsides or tops of it. Guess I'm thinking cranking here.

 

17 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

 

Agreeing with @Paul Roberts  and @Team9nine here.  And the First & last green of the season is almost always money.

I'll add that at certain times of the year Cabbage Weed here is a great place to find some stout bass.  (Can also be a Pike Magnet, but you gotta take the good with the bad I guess.)  And although the pic below designates it as "The Best weeds" and it can be - it's often a little easier to fish.  This becomes prime time for me when there are "patches" of this growing on a hard bottom with some open water between them - not too much, but just enough to allow me to pull along a swimbait, swim jig, chatterbait or zip a spinnerbait or shallow crank (usually squarebill) or the best case scenario - Lippless bait ripped along the edges - catching a bit here & there - and then ~ BOOM ! 

 If the horizontal presentation isn't getting bit and a I need to go vertical - 90% of the time it's one of these

 

 

A-Jay

I don't have "cabbage" here. I fished it in a number of places in NY and it was a bass magnet. I have P. crispus (Curly Pondweed) here, but it doesn't seem to provide much fishing. This could be bc it dies back so early and is only around during the spawn, when the bass are occupied with other business. The other Potamogeton I have here is pectinus, which I call Threadleaf. It's awful: It doesn't interest the fish and is impossible to fish through, even close to.

[WRB]

IN-Fisherman did a early study report called "largemouth bass in the slop", excellent detailed report on various weed types and how bass use them.

Tom