OK, did a major bass cover renovation Saturday. No photos yet though. I had a very large cattail patch that just never had any bass in it or near it. Just hung on the edge, which extends 30 feet out from shore. I used the Jenson Lake Mower with a rake and a helper to take out everything from the shore all the way to the deepest cattails which I left. I used the HD5000 model as this was very tough cutting. I have a lot of floating material to be removed all at once as most of it has been windblown to a common location.
I read a lot of archived bass behavior articles from The Pond Boss. Even an article where Bob offers a different opinion from another author. What I am doing is making a picket fence of cattails, with 4 foot gaps along the line. The water is at least 6 foot deep at full pond. There is some changes from distance from shore, and minor depth changes. So what my goal is casting lanes inside this fence and boat access. But more important open the entire area up for LMB entrance and exit points. From my experience, they do not like swimming through or into dense stands of cattails. But I am giving them a lot of wide paths, entrances, exits and ambush points with changes of cover.
When there was a hole behind the cattails, and just one shoreline access in and out, nothing was in there. Even though it was open water, it seemed cattail locked. Now I have deep water access, many different spots and lanes in and out every ten feet or so. I am modifying what naturally overgrew. Trying to make it forage friendly but LMB feeding zone.
Giving one bulrush patch one haircut after another. This stuff is just too stiff and dense for bass to do anything in it. I have one patch extending out to 7 foot water at least 30 feet out. I am planting lily pads at it's former deep edge, and cutting it back to two feet from shore, maybe 2 feet deep. It's good for shoreline forage, but out deep it just occupies space and bottom. The lilies I am shaping into a large circle with a ten foot diameter opening in the center. LMB swim through it, and lay under it in the shade. If the forage try to make a run for it from the bulrush to the lilies I think they get ambushed. I have seen one 5 lb LMB live on the edge of the lilies, and several smaller ones on the inside of it. Again, I am just modifying what had grown way out of control. But I am also adding another plant, for diversity and able to shape it and put it exactly where I want it.
Last is another bulrushes patch but this has grown in a line, almost perfectly parallel to the shore, in a ten foot deep area. This patch has grown to about 25 feet in length. Here I cut gaps in the line, alternate 4 foot of bulrush, four foot space. I hesitate to do a lot with it as I have caught a 8 lb LMB and an 11 lb albino channel cat right off of it. LMB both hold inside of it and outside of it. But they can't swim through it. A lot of forage hides in it. But it is pretty close to a spillway entrance which makes it a liability with further expansion. So I just made 3 seperate but in a line patches.
The hardest part of all of this is just originally changing the overgrown areas and removing the dead and old growth. Cutting the new growth is just routime maintenance. My long term goals are to keep two invasive plants from taking over pond. Stay in compliance with CA state guidelines. Make isolated areas of cattails and bulrushes, not total eradication, but maybe 2-3% of shoreline, and keep it out of everywhere else. Mainly contain it, but leave enough for variety, forage and frog and coot areas. Improve the fishery. You could call it cattail/bulrush management. I'll take photos and report on observations as far as how it worked for LMB cover and fishing.
Last edited by The Pond Frog; 03/14/10 12:36 PM.
