Weeds..what to do ??

It seems that the town fathers send out a flotilla of "weed cutting boats". They chop and cut and chop and cut, and are supposed to scoop the cuttings up into their oversize mauls. Many of the cuttings wind up floating on the lake.

Add to that, some gooey, sticky, messy type weeds that cling to every crank bait and even to topwaters!!! What does one do to get through the morass? I notice the locals all think drowning leeches straight down to be a solution...but....I'm not going to do that.

I'm thinking I have to go rig some special weedless plastics. But, I probably don't have the patience to fish them slowly enough. All ideas appreciated. RichG TX- WI

I have a similar problems with weeds when the pleasure boaters insist on running through the weed beds and chopping them up. Here's some of the solutions that I've come up with.

Using a safety pin style spinnerbait is fairly weedless, yet has good fish catching properties and is less frustrating to use. A fine diameter superline will enable you to snap the rod tip and clear many of the weeds from both the line and the lure. The no-stretch properties of the line allow you to give the lure the quick and hard snap that breaks the weeds free, plus has the advantage of drawing reaction strikes from near-by gamefish on occasion. The fine diameter will also cut through the weeds like a weed whacker.

Not all soft plastic lures need be fished slow. Using soft plastic jerkbaits like the Zoom Fluke or Lunker City Fin-S minnow, texas rigged will eliminate much of the problem as well. These lures can be fished pretty fast.

If you insist on using crankbaits, you could try rigging a couple of lures with trebles with wire weedguards.

Much of the problem can be solved by looking for clear casting lanes in the floating weeds. By simple avoidance of the floating weeds, you can get mostly weedfree casts in, depending on how bad the weeds are.

At least that's what I do.