Using a buoyant bait and a sufficiently long link to the leger weight or feeder should enable one to float the bait either above or on the surface of weed.RBTraditional wrote: ↑Fri Aug 09, 2019 4:43 pm Float fish over the weed... ledgering will only bury the bait, I fail to see just how some of these complicated ledger rigs work in really weedy conditions...if you can’t use a traditional noisy rake then an Aspen weed rake (pole system) will remove weed so that you can fish a bait on a cleanish bottom without disturbing the neighbours
A lot of the time you may be fishing a) well beyond raking distance either pole mounted or thrown (unless you are some Geoff Capes sort - in which case you probably won't have to bother too much either about complaints from other anglers) and/or b) at a depth greater than a fixed float will allow (and, as someone who has tried on many occasions, finding the correct depth to use a slider over thick weed is just about impossible).
Both Len and Ted Head had great success at Bures, back in the day, using float leger techniques (Ted rarely fished any other way), but that was long before the dramatic increase in phosphate/nitrate infiltration from agricultural runoff, along with silt, from the 90s on which have led to the proliferation of thick weed in so many waters now.
I agree that many of the fancy rigs you see are over-complicated and it is difficult to see what some of the more esoteric variations actually achieve, but there should be some relatively simple but effective ways to deal with this problem.
...but in all honesty I dislike the modern approach to angling that puts catching before the pleasure of being beside the water, being at one with nature and at peace with ones self.... 
