Sure you can catch fish around the edges early and late, but most folks don't realize the bass are often as likely to move back shallower into the thicker pads than leave the bed and head to deeper water during the day. It is our challenge to exploit the thicker vegetation and catch the fish out of the pockets. The first style was the use of a pegged worm or lizard. I am a slow learner, but I learned to actually hunt the thick stuff rather than complain about it. While it is always fun to watch a bass crash through the thick stuff after a weedless spoon or frog, more often than not you need to go through it to get them to strike.
Reeds are another common type of water vegetation.
The problem with reeds is that they tend to offer little horizontal cover during the midday periods. The growth doesn't offer much of a canopy to begin with and the problem is made more complex in that most don't grow in very deep water. If shade is an important factor in holding bass then these plants can best be thought of as shadow makers. What they lack in blocking the more direct sunlight they tend to overcome by their shear mass in casting shadows in angled sunlight. This means that if bass migrate to shaded banks in the evening and stay in such shaded areas longer in the morning that banks with cattails and reeds simply further enhance this trend to create shaded holding areas.