At some pet stores, you should be able to find a device with a blade on one end, a trigger on the other, and is long enough to reach into the pond. I can't remember the name of it, but it works great.

So far, I just take a dip. When the weather and water cool, I will turn 'smurf-colored' doing it, unless I find another solution like you. I will start surfing and see what I can find out for us.

I had a device with cutting blades. It worked great at cutting dead plant leaves off of the live plant, but was not so good at picking the cut off parts out of the water. The device lasted several years before it rusted and stopped working.

This year I came across a grabber device at Harbor Freight. It's all plastic and the two grabbing parts are strong enough to crush stems. Its easy to pull dead parts from the plant and remove them from the water. So far I'm very pleased with it. The HF grabber cost $3 vs $28 for a "pond pruner".