The small pond I fish the majority of time has a history of being heavily
vegetated. I had an opportunity to fish for a couple of hours yesterday
afternoon and noticed that, with the exception of a few pockets of open
water here and there, the lake is nearly completely covered with milfoil.

Overall I had an excellent afternoon of bassin'. Landed a couple of 1.5 lb
LMs and a 2 lb momma that was full of eggs and probably ready to bed. (I
know that probably doesn't sound like much to you guys but considering that
I haven't gotten out as much as I'd like due to the strange Spring we've had
in WI and the fact that the pond doesn't hold a lot of big fish I was
feeling pretty good about it!)

My typical presentation to combat the thick vegetation is a t-rigged 5"
senko on a 3/0 offset worm hook with a piece of splitshot utilized at times
for weed penetration purposes. I feel like it is a pretty decent
presentation although it does seem the splitshot is a double-edged sword.
Sure you get a little more penetration BUT you also have something else the
weeds can grab on to.

Anyways, after thoroughly fishing the shores I had access to and whatever
openings in the weed beds I could locate, I started tossing out to the
middle of the pond where vegetation was heaviest. From the maps I've seen
of the lake it appears that there is a slightly deeper flat running down the
middle of the pond and I believe that the bass stage there pre-spawn before
moving to the shallower flats near the bank to bed down. In the course of
about 20 minutes I had received two MONSTROUS hits each time setting the
hook with a nice smooth dip n' rip of the rod tip only to promptly lose each
fish as they balled themselves up in the thick vegetation. I'm curious what
I can do differently technique or presentation wise to minimize these sort
of occurrences. My first thought was changing my line from mono to
supermono thinking that besides the increased durability the supermono might
cut through the weeds a little more effectively. Aside from that thought, I
have no ideas of how to attack this problem.

Any thoughts, advice, comments or critiques are greatly appreciated!!!

J.P.