I was recently asked by a fellow angler my take on how to deal with lures/baits fouled by weeds. Slap the weeds free? Pluck them off?

Indeed, weeds present a conundrum to the angler. On one hand, weed-growth is an important component in many aquatic environments, providing cover used within the food chain, from the tiniest animal life to top level predators.

Hence, being successful often means fishing around weed cover, which leads to the other hand, coping with lures entangled with vegetation. The problem is compounded this time of year, when weed-growth is dying off and floating on the surface.

Before going any further, let me address the question relating to cleaning off lures. Personally, I don’t slap a lure to clear it. If using some sort of soft plastic bait, the action of slapping it against the surface, with enough force to break the weeds free, also tends to alter the position of the bait on the hook, meaning it will need to be repositioned. Might just as well have cleaned it off by hand, and bypassed the extra wear and tear of the soft bait, which will lead to it becoming useless prematurely.

A better case can be made for ‘slapping’ hard baits. However, I still don’t do it. For one, why take the chance of spooking nearby fish? Also, from a safety point of view, it’s a bit dicey loading up the rod to spank a lure — one that typically has multiple sticky-sharp treble hooks — against the water’s surface.

Also, weeds can be stubborn, requiring several smacks to completely clear the hooks, which only increases the safety risk to those nearby. I feel it’s better to simply swing the lure in as it approaches the boat or bank, pluck it clean with the free hand, and make your next cast.

It certainly is important to clean off a weeded-up bait or lure, even a small strand of grass. Minnows, crayfish and the like don’t usually have weeds trailing them, so the presence of such will likely discourage a gamefish from striking an artificial duplicate. But keeping lures as weed-free as possible should also be part of your strategy.

Here are a few tricks I’ve learned over the years.

Floating weeds can be a big problem. On flowing waters, water celery (aka eelgrass) breaks free of the bottom and rises to the surface. Come fall, it starts to die off, increasing the issue. On weed-rich lakes like Keystone boat traffic rips weeds free, which collect on top. So, how to deal with this?

The first step is to simply pre-plan your casts to miss the obvious floating mats. Sounds obvious, but I see a lot of folks that cast blindly, and have a lure light right into a pod of salad. Second, try using stop-and-go baits like soft and hard jerkbaits.

Typically, floating weeds foul a bait by first contacting the line, and then running down the line to the bait. The twitching action imparted to work these baits correctly tends to clear tiny channel of open water, knocking floating weeds out of the way.

It doesn’t work all the time, but much more so than steady cast-and-reel baits like soft swimbaits that can be weed magnets.

Floating weeds can also be an issue for the troller. Again, floating weeds contact the line, where it enters the water, then run down the line and hang up on the lure. A small split shot crimped a few feet above the lure will often stop a weed short. A trick I’ve used with musky trolling is to use my own hand-tied fluorocarbon leaders, and to leave the tag end of the swivel knot long (around an 1 to 1.5 inches), so it acts like a barb.

This stiff tag end will usually grab a stray weed. If using a three-foot leader, it keeps the green stuff three feet above the lure. Even still, if you’re trolling a weedy lake like Keystone, Pymatuning or New York’s Chautauqua, figure on bringing your lures in regularly to be sure they are clean.

When fishing around subsurface weedy cover, pointy-shaped jigheads with the hook tie on the tip (rather than back along the head of the jig) work out best. The time-honored Texas-rig, which employs a bullet shaped sinker and wide gap worm hook, excels at presenting a wide variety of soft plastic profiles around weedy spots.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle