Trimming Fan Leaves During FLOWER?

My plants 18 days into flower now and I noticed some of the fan leaves are shading the undergrowth. Is it worth trimming these fan leaves so the undergrowth can get more light or will this just stress the plant and cause more harm than good. Have others had good results trimming fan leaves during flower?

You have to make a judgment call..... many of those shaded sites are what they call pop corn producers. The buds end up light and airy. If you have a fan leaf blocking a substantial calyx or top, by all means, tuck it or pluck it. But don't be sweating those little buds you see popping up along the bottom of the main stems. I cut em off and use those in my stash pile for brownies. We want to focus on the top of the plant and put it's energy into those colas, not the piddly stuff going on near the soil.

Hey mate, yeah its a tough sorta question to ask, a lot of people will tell you straight out that it will slow growth as it will stress the plant and remove some of its photosynthesis capabilities.
but it all comes down to how your growing your plant, do you top it, super crop it, is it a Sog or Scrog set up or just a a massive bush, i would stay away from triming anything near the top 5 nodes, is it trimming from one plant to let another plant's cola to see more light...that is also another thing you should of mentioned, i hope this can help ya mate

The plant is basically a massive bush, no top,scrog, or lst, surrounded by cfls. Some of the undergrowth is just faded by fan leaves and I already trimmed off the first 3 sets. The very first branches coming out of the first node are affected the most as they are situated directly under the fan leaves. I was just wondering if it would be worth trimming the leaves, just pulling them of as close to the main stem as possible, in order to increase yield on these bottom branches or will the yield not really increase that substantially?

Removing leaves wont increase yield. But it might make you feel like you're doing something

yea i have the exact same question, do u think i should trim the larger leaves on this?

Kinda looks like my plant. I trimmed some of the bottom leaves off of mine but I wouldn't recommend trimming too much because it will do more harm than good. If the secondary colas are not receiving enough light I would either tie back the branch or just trim it off. But remember the fan leaves fuel most of the plant's growth so don't go too nuts ya know? Just trim what is absolutely necessary and never trim above the 5th node. I think our plants are mostly sativa anyway so we will probably end up with a huge main cola but relatively small secondary colas no matter how much we trim. Hope this helps.