We're pretty fortunate here in central Indiana to have several bodies of water that are blessed with an abundance of Justicia americana, also known as water willow. If you only talk fishing lingo, you may have frequently heard it referred to as 'Geist weed' or 'rock weed'. We've spoken of it before a couple years back in THIS POST, but a soon to be published paper from some of those same authors came across my desk today and I thought it would be a good topic to revisit.
The research is titled "Effects of American Water Willow Establishment on Density, Growth, Diet, and Condition of Age-0 Largemouth Bass in Kansas Reservoirs", again by Strakosh, et. al. If you read his doctoral dissertation the first time around, you'll have way more details than the linked abstract will provide. If not, read the abstract and see if it sounds interesting, then revisit the links in the original post to get lots of good details, including a lot of practical applications to bass fishing if you 'read between the lines' like I do. After doing so, there should be no surprise as to why 'the factory' (Geist Res.) is such a good fishery.
At present on the lakes you'll only find a bunch of dead and brown weed stems left over from the winter. But within another month or so you'll start noticing some new root nodules forming, along with a greening of shoot tips. Then it's off to the races as the plant grows pretty fast and furious as things heat up. By that time though you should have already popped some nice sacks of bass out of this veggie.
Something to try:
Watch the growth procession of the weeds you can see. Do this for several areas in the lake. Check atmospheric temps as you observe. Keep a log.
Project the same kind of growth for underwater weeds based on comparable water temps range diffs and clarity. Snag some from the deep weed line to see how green they are.
If it works, you will then have not only a better handle on when oxygen starts at what levels, but reversing the projects results, can very well give you a better idea of the last spots to go brown come fall.
I think you know to what end this will go.
Posted by: Rich Ziert | March 18, 2009 at 11:42 PM