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| What are your experiences with the type of weeds that Esocids like to frequent? I have a book by Dick Sternberg that outlines a number of what he calls "Good Weeds" that these fish like to relate to. What do you know about your weeds? Also, does the type of water and water clarity affect the type of weed that an Esocid/baitfish likes? | |
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| Good question.
There are some great links to weeds on esoxresearch.com under environment links.
What is the "over/under" for how long is it going to take for B420 to answer this post?[:sun:] I say 3 hours
MUSKY ILLINI
"EL ROACHO"
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| I think muskies like weeds for several reasons. Weeds produce oxygen, offer concealment for ambush or protection, they can affect water temperature, and baitfish like them for the same reasons. I think it is difficult to say one weed is better than another since it is all relative.
A lake with limited weedgrowth will be different that a lake with an over-abundance of weeds. As other conditions change, fish may prefer one weed over others.
Generally speaking, my favorite kind of weeds are the classic cabbage beds that do NOT dye off on a seasonal basis. They are always there and in good condition... so they produce the most consistent results.
I have also noticed that the deeper growing coontail clumps are favored as water temps peak and begin to decline (late summer, early fall).
These are the only two types of weeds that I intentionally look for. The others I will still fish, but for different reasons.
Perhaps when we all get Dissolve Oxygen meters on our boats along with our temperature gauges, barometers, tranducers for the graph, etc. we can begin to determine which weeds produce a "better" environment for the fish.
Right now I'm still in a trial&error mode for fishing the weeds.
Anyone out there have a better strategy for "weeding" out the less-productive weed-types??? | |
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| Jason: Curve time again! Somewhat off the initial question, but could be important to those in some water bodies. I have had some cases where the most green, gorgeous cabbage just do not hold fish. Made me crazy. Looked so good. Near deep water basin. Big fish in the "area". They just did not use the weeds. They were either rock oriented or open water. I believe that they keyed primarily on open water forage, and had no need to set up in these beautiful weed beds. Happens most often on Canadian Shield waters. So, be careful not to get too hung up on weeds!
Muskie regards,
Larry Ramsell | |
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| Yes Larry, we know there are other places to fish than the weeds..... but you just answered the original question. Green, lush, gorgeous looking weeds got your attention as a good place to look. Unfortunately, those weeds didn't hold fish, despite fitting your criteria for "good" looking weeds.
You offered one explanation for WHY those weeds may have been sterile of muskie... but I'm sure you have more ideas too. You mentioned the open-water forage base. Do you really think that ALL the muskies in that area keyed exclusively on that forage? Do you think the water clarity had anything to do with it and the weeds may have been too shallow? Also, did the water in that area have a high dissolved oxygen content.. making the fish less dependent on weeds for oxygen? Were the weeds void of forage food as well?
We all know there are different places to look for muskies other than weeds... but perhaps we can learn WHY they don't always hold fish. If there was some "sign" to let us know that the weedbed won't produce, it would save us a lot of time and frustration. | |
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| Just a thought on Larry's post. I have scratched my head plenty of time looking at lush, green, cabbage beds, thinking hmmmm Where are they? Then I realized the muskies are there, I just cant get my bait down far enough into these weeds to trigger a strike. Dick Pearson wrote about a technique in Infisherman about fishing spinnerbaits down down down in the weeds (GREAT ARTICLE). Did anybody read it?
Pearsons technique would be great for Webster or Peewaukee. Those boats really drive those fish deep into the weeds. Somtimes it feels like they arnt there, BUT THEY ARE![:0]
Or shall I say, SOMETIMES they are there when we dont think they are there. Larry is right sometimes they arnt there. There there there..haha!
MUSKY ILLINI
"NO SHIRT - NO SHOES - NOOOOO DICE!" | |
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| One of the most underfished ,but productive, weed patterns in my area at least is deep sandgrass.These beds range from very small to large areas,are sometimes hard to detect,even with good electronics,and will most definately attract and hold big fish,especailly on lakes that lake other types of weeds and/or other type structural elements.Some of those seemingly featurless large "bowl" lakes will have some real hidden gems of patches of sandgrass.Sandgrass can grow at suprising depths as it doesnt seem to need a lot of light to develop.Hope this gives you another option to key on when your not seeing fish in the more obvious weeds or structure | |
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Favorite Esox weeds