Canadian pondweed.

[seth49]

A new club I’ve joined this year has a pond with lots of this in, the water is very clear and the weed is virtually all over the pond, it reaches the surface later in the year, there are lots of tench F 1s and some carp plus lots of silvers.

Any tips on fishing this as I’ve little experience of fishing in weed, when I did fish it once before the lockdown I lost over half of the fish I hooked due to them diving into the weed and coming off.

Feeder fishing does seem to be best for catching the tench etc, any help would be appreciated.

 

[markcw]

Can you rake a swim ? Not only will it clear the weed ,it will also bring any invertebrates out of the bottom and attract fish.
If you do rake it, check the weed for any small fish or eggs and try and return them to the water.

 

[mikench]

Raking is the only answer I’m afraid Keith as pesticides are banned by the EEC. Try one of these or Gardner make one you can cast and retrieve. I’ll be honest I have a Jakes rake but it remains unused. If a water is covered in the stuff I either find a swim that isnt or go elsewhere.

Jakes Rakes

You can make one yourself and there are various examples shown on YouTube.

 

[markcw]

I just buy 2 cheap rakes, cut handles off, put rake heads back to back zip tied together, a good length of "rope" tied to it and away you go,
Start close in and work outwards that way you are not dragging raked weed through unraked weed as I have seen quite an few people do that.

 

[flightliner]

Lots of fish like to move about just over it looking for food.
I fish a Drennan gripmesh loaded with groundbait that explodes in the water when The feeder is given a sharp pull on contact with the surface. My hookbait is often two floating imitation casters that just settle on the weed top on contact with the empty feeder sinking into the weed but not far into it being empty (I've watched it and it's a good presentation)the hooklink can be any length depending on weed depth and density.
Beside the feeder of groundbait I'll often spomb more of it in a more sloppy mix to ensure that the weed in my target area is coated with the stuff on top of the weed.
Bream and Tench cruising above it will then , hopefully, investigate and find loose feed offerings that have settled on the weeds surface layers- dead maggots are my choice here .
Using this setup I've had numerous big Tench and other species including a few carp.

 

[sam vimes]

If it's really thick, I find a combined campaign of raking and feeding is required. Rake to clear and feed over the area as often as possible. Feed something fairly cheap to keep the costs down and don't worry about geese, coots, ducks and swans taking their tithe, they'll help clear the weed as effectively as feeding fish will.

You'll inevitably find that you'll end up with a fan shaped clear area. If the weed you don't clear ends up as a slab sided border to the clear area, I find that float fishing is preferable to legering or float legering. Give them a leger weight to play with and I find that a high proportion of hooked fish will stay deep and bury themselves in the surrounding weed. With a proper float set up, a greater number of hooked fish come up in the water giving you a far better chance of actually landing them.

 

[nottskev]

I always baulked at the twin rake-heads and so on, but when I started to fish for tench on a gravel pit that filled up with pondweed as the summer went on, I bought this small rake on ebay. It looks too small to be much use - perhaps it was meant to be cast? - but for clearing a patch to floatfish in, it surprised me how quickly you can have quite a pile of weed on the bank next to you. Being so small, it's not a chore to carry around on a just-in-case basis.

 

[seth49]

Thanks for your replies, I do have a rake, I’ll have to ask the bailiff if it’s ok to use it, I should think it will be ok, I know he has a large rake which they pull from one bank to the other when it gets really bad.

There are some really nice fish in here, they seem to do well, the tench breed well in here, it seems to suit them.will be fishing this quite a lot I think.

 

[markcw]

A water I fish uses an old bike wheel with barbed wire around rim and spokes, length of rope, works wonders,. Need gloves to take weed off wheel.

 

[Pete Shears]

I use a 5lb tc spod rod with a reel loaded with 50lb braid to clear weed of any sort.A gripper sea lead with the wires doctored so they cannot fold back and release completes the set up.Sometimes the ball of weed is as big as a basketball,no more arm aching than trying to throw a rake head about which I find awkward and can be cast long distances if needed.

 

[Philip]

I like Flightliners suggestion, I used to do something similar on a Gravel pit that was very weedy. On hot days the Tench would cruise above the weed in the edge. If its really thick you can spread some light visible feed that stayed on top of it – white breadcrumb was good- it could stop the Tench who would investigate. I remember catching a good one on a lump of freelined bread flake like that. It stood out like a becon on the weed.

On another weedy lake that had long fronds of it bottom to top with clear patches in between I used to fish right in the edge with corn and a piece of yellow foam to pop it up from the lead..like a zig rig. I used to lower it directly down from the rod between gaps in the weed. Lowering it slowly the hook bait followed the lead straight down. If I felt a solid donk on the bottom with the lead I knew my bait was fishing clear & I put some bait round it. That worked really well for the Carp in the lake.
Another method would be to try a slider float. If you bunch the shot up near the hook and fish it nice and compact then cast to a hole in the weed the bait and shot should slide directly down into the hole rather than if you fished a more conventional waggler with a long tail that risks hanging up as the bait descends.

PVA bags is another possible with a short hooklink and bait tucked into the bag.
Floater fishing over the weed could be another possible if the fish are cruising near the surface.

Obviously in all cases its important to use strong enough tackle to get them out.

 

[seth49]

Some good ideas there Philip, I know the tench do get caught shallow as they can be seen cruising over the weed in hot weather.

I texted the bailiff yesterday and he said I was ok to use my rake, so that will be the first thing I do when I get there on Tuesday, should be an interesting day.

Going to tie some hook lengths later with either plastic corn or casters, to try as well as more natural baits.

Some good ideas chaps, thank you.