Pulling a fish through extremely thick vegetation

[Glaucus]

A pond I fish is virtually one solid mat of weeds. Sometimes to get a fish in, I have to stop reeling and take hold of the rod with both hands and back up as I pull. It's so thick that the bass gives up fighting and reeling just isn't enough. Sometimes when I finally get them in, the bass is lifeless. No fight, no wiggle, and just covered in weeds, with their mouth often packed full of it too. After cleaning them off and taking the weeds out of their mouth, I nurse them back to life in the water and they swim off apparently fine. However I am wondering if this is too stressful and if I could be killing some of these fish? I haven't noticed any belly up bass, but then again, the weeds would do a go job making that hard to see to begin with.

[scaleface]

Dont worry about it . I have caught fish like that also . Its not exciting but some of those bass have been huge .

[jr231]

If it is COMPLETELY covered , then try to punch with a beaver style bait. You can punch effectively from the bank you just have to pick apart the edges.. I'd experiment and try to use the lowest weight possible but it sounds like you should use at least an ounce.  Go tungsten and I'd peg it. 

[BassObsessed]

If it's anything like one of the ponds like I fished today try a frog. They normally stay calm when they're covered in weeds until they can see then its light a light switch. Almost every bass caught today came in like this.

[Glaucus]

50 minutes ago, BassObsessed said:

If it's anything like one of the ponds like I fished today try a frog. They normally stay calm when they're covered in weeds until they can see then its light a light switch. Almost every bass caught today came in like this.

This is what I'm dealing with. The pictures do not do the weeds justice. They are thick and have grown to the top of the water. What I have found is best is weightless plastics dragged and dropped in holes.

 

[Bluebasser86]

They're not lifeless, they're just calm after being covered up by all the vegetation. Nothing to worry about. 

[CTBassin860]

My kind of pond. That's where the pigs live. Frog it!

[Deleted account]

15 hours ago, Glaucus said:

A pond I fish is virtually one solid mat of weeds. Sometimes to get a fish in, I have to stop reeling and take hold of the rod with both hands and back up as I pull. It's so thick that the bass gives up fighting and reeling just isn't enough. Sometimes when I finally get them in, the bass is lifeless. No fight, no wiggle, and just covered in weeds, with their mouth often packed full of it too. After cleaning them off and taking the weeds out of their mouth, I nurse them back to life in the water and they swim off apparently fine. However I am wondering if this is too stressful and if I could be killing some of these fish? I haven't noticed any belly up bass, but then again, the weeds would do a go job making that hard to see to begin with.

That's the only way to do it sometimes. Set the hook, keep tension, when it gets bogged down, point the rod at the fish and walk backwards a few steps, walk up to the water's edge reeling in the slack while maintaining tension and repeat. I once pulled a 2'x5' mat that took a while to go through before finding a good one in the middle.

[Mike L]

She'll be fine.

It's par for the course when fishing in mat's. 

Just try to get her head up as fast as you can and scim her across. 

Less chance of losing it to. 

 

 

 

 

Mike