Terry Hearn on clearing areas

Clearing channels through weed is great so long as you’ve got the time ahead of you, or your prepping a swim on a quiet water for the future, but say for instance you’ve just moved onto fish and you’ve only got a day or a night ahead of you, then it’s not really going to be conducive.

There’s certainly been occasions when I’ve used a gripper/breakaway sea lead with the prongs taped up to create a spot, but it’s not something I do a lot, not unless I’m thinking well ahead and I’m on a water where I can benefit from all the hard work. The last time I did it was on The Road Lake, where I spent hours and hours carving a channel through the weed in order to get to a small gravel hump which I knew existed, but clearly hadn’t been fished in a long time. Eventually I had the spot raked off perfectly and the surrounding surface weed shaped exactly how I wanted it, and I even went on to catch a 19lber towards the end of my 48hr session. That was the thing though, The Road Lake had a 48hr rule and so I couldn’t really benefit from all the effort. Someone else did though, catching both the Dink and Three Scales from the spot if my memory serves me right!

More often than not, if I can already get a rig to the spot then I’ll simply drape a slack line over the top of the surrounding weed. Just recently I got lucky enough to winkle out the lovely Spitfire Common from up in Norfolk, from a hole in the weed just fifteen or so feet from the bank, and though I could have quite easily raked a channel through the weed for my main line, I really didn’t want to alter the shape and nature of the spot too much. Instead I shortened my leadcore, put three bits of putty up the main line and then let it drape over the top of the surrounding weed, which was coming up to within eighteen-inches of the surface. It worked for me.