Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Learning Your Aquatic Plants to Catch More Fish

The world of aquatic plants is vast and diverse.  They live under the water, on top of the water, and grow out of the water.  Aquatic plants make good habitat for a wide variety of critters: larval insects, fish, amphibians, birds, and small mammals.  



A good way to start is to learn the common plants in the lake you fish or recreate in the most. The plants that grow out of the water are easiest to identify. Smartphone applications like my favorite "PictureThis" will give you the general class of plants and often gets the species correct just by the leaf characteristics.  If you can find a flower blooming on any plant, the PictureThis app is really accurate at giving you the species names. 

Underwater plants are a little more tricky in identifying with an app. When you pick up aquatic plants that live underwater they often fall limp and don't photograph well enough for computer app identification.  These are the plants you will need to learn by hand using my upcoming guides.  Once you know the species, there are some tricks I will share on how to catch more fish out of them.  

Look for future episodes coming soon.   

AquaticBiologyforAnglers.com