Too much hydrilla and milfoil – both invasive species – is obviously a bad thing for boaters, anglers and fish because the stuff becomes so thick in some areas that no fish over 6 inches long can even navigate through it. But the right amount of weed cover is what makes a bass lake in the southeastern United States.

Florida’s Game & Fish Commission did a study a few years back and found lakes with about 10 to 20 percent hydrilla coverage produced more and bigger bass than those without it, or those with more than these percentages.

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The fact that no top ten bass have been caught in Caney since the ‘90s points to a problem that occurred during that decade. Grass carp were introduced to the lake back then to control hydrilla and the carp basically removed virtually all the lake’s vegetation.

Now that grass is returning to the lake, forage fish like threadfin shad and bream have protection for reproduction and the bass that feed on them have been able to increase weights as they don’t have to move around as much to find plenty to eat.

Much of the returning grass is hydrilla, but there is another species of grass growing in Caney Lake now that offers potential as is provides aquatic cover for forage fish as well as predator species like largemouth bass; eel grass.

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