Pete,

Assuming that the vegetation is mainly sticking to the hook and not to the leadhead, have you tried shielding the hook with a homemade "weed guard" that can be made with a very thin wire which is wound around the attachment "eye" of the leadhead and formed into a V shape running from the eye to slightly above the hook? To keep the wire stable, thread is wrapped around the wire at the eye and epoxied to the bottom of the eye.

I have not tried this with a swimbait, but it worked well when I attached such a weedguard to bucktail jigs that I used to use drifting in very thick kelp for rockfish and lings in norcal. I bought a few different thin gauges of wire from Netcraft to find the gauge that woked best for that application.

Alternatively, one can drill a small hole at the correct angle behind the attachment eye of the leadhead and glue in a plastic "Y guard". I have not looked for them recently, but a few of the catalog companies used to sell packs of such plastic Y guards. I have never seen a leadhead that comes with a weedguard.

Someone told me that he uses a straight length of a cut rubberband (not necessarily brown)as a weedguard, tying one end to the attachment eye and very barely sticking the hook tip into but not through the other end. I have not tried this.