Canoes and kayaks are the perfect platforms for getting right into aquatic weedbeds and pulling out a few fat impoundment bass or according to Dave Magner.
To the average angler, weeds are an annoyance and something to be avoided at all costs. The dreaded green gunk covers your hooks and clogs your lures and makes fishing a waste of time. When that sort of attitude prevails it’s easy to see why so many fishos simply give these weed infested places a wide berth and find a nice stretch of clear water where their lures can swim along without the need for constant checking.
For those who understand the possibilities presented by aquatic vegetation however, it’s a completely different scenario. Weed beds provide food, oxygen and shelter for fish, making them prime places to find your quarry. Once you know how to work these areas effectively, weed beds can be some of the most productive places you can paddle over.
Kayaks are ideal for sneaking in amongst the lilies and pulling out a few bass.
I’ll be the first to admit that I once fell into the former category. In my younger days I was a fanatical lure troller and I’d get frustrated every time my lure got wrapped up in green stuff. The way I approached fishing meant that constantly fouling up with weed simply wasted too much valuable fishing time, so like most other people I knew, I steered clear of it.
It took a stint in the Northern Territory to turn my attitude around. In the top end billabongs, there is often more weed than open water, and if you don’t find ways to work with it, you will miss out on a lot of action. I quickly learned the value of cast and retrieve techniques and weedless presentations. Naturally, I didn’t kayak in these places due to the local lizard population, but the experience I gained while fishing tropical billabongs certainly helped me since my return to bass waters in south east Queensland.
No weedbed bass is safe once you understand the advantages of weedless lures.
WORKING WITH WEEDS
One of the most significant changes you can make to your kayak fishing is your mental approach to weed beds. Rather than try to avoid them, you need to embrace them for the opportunities they provide. Don’t stay on the outside edges; instead try pushing right into the thick of the vegetation before you start fishing.
You will often find that what looks like a solid mat of vegetation is sometimes just a thin layer of pads floating on the surface with clear water underneath. Even when the weeds do fill the entire water column, there will often be little pockets or laneways of clear water, and these places are often home to some of the biggest and least educated fish in our impoundments. Don’t worry about the fact that these little clearings are surrounded by weeds, even a tiny hole the size of a bathtub can be big enough to hold a decent bass. The best news of all is that these locations are ideal places to creep up on with your kayak.
Actually, kayaks and canoes are the perfect platforms for weed bed fishing. With no motor to worry about, you can paddle right through the sort of vegetation that stops outboard powered boats in their tracks. You tend to slip right over the top of the vegetation and I never cease to be amazed at how far back into weed choked bays I can push my yak. Of course, the lack of engine noise also works in our favour. If you take it slow and carefully work your way through the weeds you can sneak right up on unsuspecting fish and make accurate, short range casts which allow you to watch the whole process unfold, and that only adds to the attraction.
So once you are mentally prepared for a bit of weed bashing, what’s the best way to go about it? With the explosion in popularity of soft plastics, a whole range of weedless rigging options exists for you to choose from. You just have to decide if you want to fish over the top of the weeds with a surface lure, or target the small patches of open water within the weed beds, which is often best accomplished with a sub-surface presentation. Both approaches have their pros and cons and each can be successful on any given day.
Take your pick of weedless lures. There are heaps to pick from these days.
GET ON TOP
Without a doubt, surface fishing in the weeds is the most enjoyable approach. If the bass are willing to come to the top to feed then this is always my first choice option. Usually, the best surface fishing in the weed beds takes place during warmer weather. In spring through to late summer, the weeds are growing and spreading; pumping out lots of oxygen which really kick starts the food chain in the immediate area.
For maximum action, I reckon you can’t beat early summer, particularly if the lilies are flowering. The blooms attract insects and other small critters and the fish are usually keyed into targeting them. As a bonus, it’s always nice to be paddling around between the flowers, listening to the birds and frogs and pulling a few fish up to the side of the kayak as you go.
Most of my surface fishing is done with frog imitations. These are either hollow bodied lures, or your more typical soft plastics. To fish these, it’s simply a matter of flipping your lure right back into the thick of the weeds before working it back with a retrieve which mimics a frog jumping from pad to pad. Slow and steady with a few small leaps and lots of nice long pauses when your lure is sitting on top of a floating pad is the go and this type of fishing requires a bit of patience on the part of 
the angler.
If you’ve never fished this way before, it’s easy to be sceptical of an approach where your lure hardly touches the water, but I assure you, it can be incredibly effective. The sound of something small and vulnerable working its way across the top of the pads can drive the fish nuts and we have had bass explode up through the lilies to try and knock lures into the water.
On a really good day, the sound of bass blowing up through the pads as they feed will be easy to hear, and this can allow you to target areas where active fish are hunting. Trust me, knowing there is a bass lurking somewhere below your lure – just waiting to strike – really gets the adrenalin going. The biggest problem is not reacting too quickly and pulling the lure out of the fish’s mouth before the hooks have found their mark.
WHAT LURKS BELOW
When conditions are less than optimal, it can often be better to go with a sub-surface approach. While it’s a little less exciting than the surface option, it’s still very much sudden death fishing. When you hook up in a tiny patch of open water and there are weeds all around for the fish to bury you in, you need to react quickly and get the upper hand right from the start if you are to have any hope of landing your prize. My advice is to hold the rod tip high and go hard.
Another bonus of the sub-surface approach is the fact it opens up more options in terms of lure types you can choose from. I’ve had success with a whole range of body types including traditional worm styles, curl and paddle tail grubs, lizards, yabbies and even shads and flickbaits. Basically, if you can work a plastic so that you get maximum action without having to move it too far, it should do the trick.
My only other proviso is that I find natural colour schemes that look at home in the weeds to be more productive than bright and garish offerings. That means blacks, browns and greens or blends of each are usually the go. While fish that are tucked up in the weeds don’t see as many lures as their open water counterparts, they generally know their immediate environment intimately and can easily be spooked by things that look out of place.
In terms of jigheads, try to go with the lightest one you can cast. What you want is a lure that lands softly, and then slowly wafts down rather than one that crash lands and plummets to the bottom. A lure with good hang time is much more likely to attract the interest of fish and will be less likely to get caught in the weeds.
Finding the right presentation vehicle for your plastic really does require a bit of trial and error. Most soft plastics will sink as soon as you place a hook in them but some brands (like Z-Man) float, and you will need slightly more weight on them to get them to go under.
Another consideration is hook style and construction. Fishing in the weeds requires serious rod work, so hooks have to be up to the task or they will get straightened easily. Luckily most weedless hooks are built with largemouth bass fishing in mind, which is generally done with very heavy tackle so they are usually up to the task.
Another often overlooked point is that for most weedless soft plastic presentations to work, the fish has to get most of, if not the whole lure, into its mouth. If you use a hook that is too large, it can be very difficult to get an effective hook up. If you go too small with the hook however, there may not be enough clearance for the plastic to compress and expose the hook point, so pay close attention to what you use. In short, go for the strongest, smallest hook you can get away with.
GET IN THERE
I guess the message I’m trying to get across is that weed beds are places kayak anglers are ideally situated to target. Paddle power can get you into places other larger craft can’t reach. Our stealthy approach allows us to make presentations to unsuspecting fish and that also helps to put the odds in our favour. Most of all, this sort of close range bass fishing is just plain challenging and exciting. You get to see a lot of the action happen and the fights are usually short, sharp and often brutal. So don’t avoid the weeds, embrace them and bring a whole new perspective to your impoundment bass fishing.
Dave Magner is a keen angler who relishes the freedom and flexibility that fishing from canoes and kayaks brings. While he’ll chase anything with fins, he has a real passion for our native and imported freshwater species
