Guide To Aquatic Vegetation

It's a beautiful, sunny afternoon and you're out on your boat for a great day of bass fishing after work. It's the first time you've been on this new lake, and you're excited to see what it holds. You read on the internet that people have been catching them deep recently. You fish ledges with a deep diving crankbait for a while with no luck and you're ready to make a change. You run to the other end of the lake and find a large patch of emergent vegetation. Immediately you tie on a punch rig and start flipping the vegetation. You find them stacked up in the vegetation by flipping your favorite creature bait. The only problem is, you have no idea what kind of vegetation it is or the properties of it. Many fishermen, including myself, have had this problem at one point. A lot of people refer to most vegetation as just "weeds," but there's a lot more to it than that. Once you learn the properties of certain aquatic plants, you can better understand why and how bass relate to those certain plants. Knowing properties of the "weeds" you're fishing can help you understand why the bass were there, and in turn, can help you replicate your results.

General Information on Aquatic Vegetation

Aquatic vegetation always plays a factor when bass fishing. If there's any type of aquatic plant in a lake, and there's bass in that lake, I guarantee you there is a population of bass there almost year round. As a rule of thumb, target the greenest vegetation possible. Healthy, green plants produce a lot of oxygen. In turn, the bass find that patch of green vegetation and stay there because of the high amounts of oxygen. In high oxygen areas, bass tend to be much more aggressive and in higher abundance. Another reason bass like vegetation is the ease of ambushing prey such as bluegill, sunfish, and shad. They can hide in the vegetation and wait for a bait fish to pass by. These principles apply most to largemouth because they relate to cover more and would rather let prey come to them, but smallmouth and spotted bass can also be found in vegetation.

Water Hyacinth is an emergent, floating aquatic plant that is native to the Amazon Basin. It has since been introduced to the United States and is a highly invasive plant. Water hyacinth is most commonly found in Florida and California, but can be found elsewhere as well.

Water hyacinth looks like something you might see in your mother's garden. It has very green, curved leaves with strong stems. During the certain times of the year, water hyacinth can develop bright, pinkish-purple flowers above its leaves. This can become an easy way to decipher if a plant is hyacinth or not.

At this point, you're probably wondering when I'll start talking about how bass relate to water hyacinth. In that case, here it is...bass love canopy-like vegetation. It gives them a sense of safety and can be a key factor when they're spawning. Since water hyacinth is floating and emergent, bass love sitting under that canopy and waiting for bait fish to swim past. Your best bet is to use a punch rig or punching jig with a heavy weight (my favorite is the Santone Lures Rattle Hog) to get through the hyacinth to where the bass are. You can also use other lures such as a frog, buzzbait, swimbait, or chatterbait to fish the edge of the hyacinth and cover more water.

Patch of Water Hyacinth (bhelas.co.uk)

Lily Pads are definitely the most commonly-known aquatic plant of them all. I believe this is because they are visible and have a distinct shape. Although there are many different species of lily pad, they all look very similar.

A lily pad is a floating, flowering aquatic plant with a long stem that hangs from the bottom. Lily pads are round in shape and fairly thin. They provide an excellent canopy with added cover underwater from the stems.

Although we all know what a lily pad is, it's still a very interesting plant. The canopy it creates is a magnet to the bass especially during the spring or summer months. The stem that hangs down can create cover and oxygen for the bass. When fishing around emergent vegetation that covers the surface such as lily pads, you don't need to be as worried about spooking the fish by sight. What you do need to remember, however, is that bumping a clump of pads with your boat could spook fish nearby. There is really no wrong way to fish pads. A hollow body frog is the most common way to fish them. One thing to keep in mind is when your frog is sitting on a pad, all the bass see is a slight silhouette. It's better to pause your frog when between pads, so the bass can see it easier. You can fish reaction baits such as spinnerbaits or chatterbaits in between pads, you can punch thicker clumps of pads, or drag and hop a craw bait under the pads. There are really endless options for fishing pads, so knock yourself out with your bait selection!

Awesome Picture of Lily Pads (tampabay.com)

Matted grass is not necessarily one plant, but a combination of many types. Matted grass is formed when vegetation such as hydrilla, milfoil, and tules (information below) die or detach from the ground. This causes them to float up and clump together, which forms a thick layer of plant above the surface. Algae often combines with these plants to create a heavy pile of slop.

Matted grass can look different depending on which species of plant form it. Typically it will just look like a bunch of vegetation mashed together-simple enough. Since the mat is floating, it can move pretty easily when the wind is blowing. Matted grass provides a layer of shade and protection above the water.

Since bass like protection and canopy-like vegetation, matted grass often holds an abundance of bass-especially when they are looking for shade in the hot summer months. When fishing matted grass, you have to take into account the properties of it. If the grass is still fresh and stiff, it will be easy to get through the mat with a texas/ punch rig with a heavy weight. If it's sloppy and dead, don't count it out, but turn to a weedless topwater lure like a frog to fish the mat. This is your best bet to catch bass out of a sloppy mat.

Great Example of a Grass Mat (advancedangler.com)

Cattails, Bulrush, and Tules are all names for a tall, grass-like aquatic plant. This plant is native to the United States, and is one of the most common aquatic plants of all. Most bodies of water have some sort of cattail-like plant in or around them.

All the names I listed describe a general group of plants. All of these plants have a couple things in common. They are all fairly tall, and they grow from the ground (they are not floating plants). Cattails and bulrush typically describe a plant that grows a corn dog-looking flower around the top part of the stem of the plant. Tules, also known as "California bulrushes," have the same stem structure as a cattail, but do not have the corn dog-looking flower around them. Most tules don't flower at all, but some have small (typically beige colored) flowers at the top of the stem. The reasons I don't put these plants into separate categories are the names can be used interchangeably, and they are all fished exactly the same because they provide the same cover underwater.

These plants are not floating like the previous types of vegetation. They provide thick cover for bass to disappear in. These types of aquatic plant can produce very well, and are at their best, during the spawn, spring, or the fall. They can also produce very well on a cloudy summer day. The method to fish these types of plants really depends on how abundant they are. If they are extremely thick (such as in the picture below), your only options may be a punch rig/ jig. Granted you can use other lures, but you'll be able to fish vegetation like this much more efficiently with those lures. If it is very sparse vegetation, you can get almost any lure through it efficiently as long as it doesn't have an overly exposed hook or treble hooks.

Large Area Packed with Tules (coastalanglermag.com)

Milfoil, Hydrilla, and Coontail...although these are all different species of aquatic plant, they all act the same. These three types of plant are all invasive aquatic plants. They are commonly sprayed out and removed from ecosystems for multiple reasons. New ways to remove this plant are always being invented. The most recent method for destroying it is the "Milfoil Weevil." This bug slowly eats away at plants such as milfoil and removes a large amount for the size of the bug.

The only way I can explain to you what these plants look like without a diagram or picture is "soft pine needles." This may sound ridiculous, but it's probably the best description of the appearance of these types of plants. They are all green, non-floating, non-flowering aquatic plants that rarely emerge above water surface unless they are detached or matted. The differences between milfoil and coontail are subtle, but distinguishable. Milfoil is thicker and softer, while coontail tends to be much stiffer and a brighter green color. Hydrilla is longer and less mushy than the other two. Hydrilla is the most dominant species of the three. Milfoil is more common up north and hydrilla can be found more down south.

These plants spread rapidly and (unlike tules and cattails) produce a lot of oxygen underwater. This is the main reason tules and cattails don't produce as well in the summer months. In the summer, bass are aggressive and require a lot of oxygen to stay active. Milfoil, hydrilla, and coontail produce the oxygen to keep them active and healthy. The best way to fish around these plants depends on the depth of the water. If you can fit a reaction-style lure between the surface and top of the plants, that is probably the best way to fish it. In deeper water, you can use crankbaits to barely tick the tops of the plants to produce a reaction strike from a fish.

From Left to Right: Milfoil, Coontail, Hydrilla
(fishinglakeguntersville.com)

In conclusion, one thing to always keep in mind when fishing in or around aquatic vegetation is to look for changes in the vegetation. Say there are many clumps of hyacinth, but one clump has tules mixed in with the hyacinth. That clump is more likely to be holding bass in it. Also, when it comes to aquatic plants, the greener the better. I tried to mention this as much as possible, but high oxygen areas = more active and abundant bass. Greener plants produce much more oxygen, which is why bass relate to them more often.