Bowfishing rigs don't clip the grass in any way unless they're running the outboard or trolling motor like a bass boat. The air fan doesn't do anything to the grass.

All the clippings likely are remnants of whatever shoreline management is being done with the giant mulcher boat used to clear boat lanes and in some specific coves. Definitely is aggravating trying to throw anything with exposed hooks.


Grass carp won't eat the eelgrass and hydrilla isn't high on their list of preferred vegetation. In the early 1990s when the pissy "stakeholder" group was trying to force TVA to release grass carp, TVA did a study of the potential impacts and/or benefits. They used a huge block net in either Short or Spring creek to contain three times the amount of grass carp that normally would've been stocked in an area of the size protected by the net. If I remember correctly the creek had ample hydrilla, I think some milfoil, possibly coontail and whatever native vegetation was in there. (This was well before eelgrass was discovered upriver.)

TVA determined that the carp wiped out the beneficial native vegetation first, with the more coarse hydrilla at or near the bottom of the list of preferred vegetation. Their recommendation was that grass carp would not affect the hydrilla in the lake, would harm native beneficial vegetation, and it also would be financially unsound to attempt to stock grass carp in the reservoir.

Of course, the "stakeholders" didn't give a chit about it and didn't believe them. They pooled their money, maybe got whatever other financial resources they could, and released a bunch of grass carp. Of course, TVA was correct and the hydrilla still remains. Bowfishermen certainly enjoyed shooting the giant grass carp the pissy stakeholders wasted their money on with the stocking.

Ma Nature takes care of vegetation, usually, in cycles. About the only way to truly get rid of it would be massive poisoning like what was done on Lake Conroe in south Texas years ago. Conroe went from one of the best lakes for fishing to a giant suckhole good for nothing but recreational boaters. Fortunately some of the grass has returned there now.