I have very limited experience with these baits but I'm looking to start throwing them more.  There is little to no grass where I fish but there are a ton of lily pads.  I fish mostly docks with some rocky/woody bank beating thrown in.

 

Do they work well around docks?

 

I've thrown them in the pads a bit but it's a strange feeling because i feel like I'm fishing it wrong.  I'm throwing them on a weighted swimbait hook.  I'll let it sink and start reeling slowly but I can't keep it down in the pads because it rides up the stems and over the top of the pads.  Am I doing something wrong or is that just what happens?

 

Any advice or thoughts is much appreciated.  Thanks.

Put a bullet weight in front of the hook.

 

Allen

I've used a keel-weighted hook with these baits but by-in-large I mostly just Texas-rig them.  The bullet weight in the front tends to keep them free of anything but algae. 

 

Oh, if the line snags the top of a lilly pad, it's going to pull the bait up to the surface-regardless of the type of bait it is.

I use a weighted swim bait hook for them. I also fish a lot of pads if the swim bait rides up, I’ll pull it over the pad and let it drop into the next opening pause for a second and keep reeling. 

The tails on Keitechs seem to find the "V" in a pad and get popped off far to often for me to fish them that way much.  It's an effective presentstion, but I use cheaper/more durable paddle tails for it.  The slow and subtle wiggle of a Keitech is kinda wasted if you are fishing them around pads imho.  

 

Put them on the back of a swim jig and throw them in those pads. My BIL puts a 5" on the back of a swim jig and does really well with it. I use the same on the back of my bladed jigs. Looks too big for the bait until a 5 pounder has it in it's mouth, they you start thinking how big of a hook it would take to put a 6 or 7 inch one on the back