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Bass fishing with frogs is
one of the best techniques for catching giant largemouth bass all over
the country. While most anglers employ a slow twitch and pause technique
in either heavy cover or lily pads, and this does catch big bass most of
the time, but there are times when you can pass up some of the largest
bass in the area by not changing up tactics with these frog baits.
Types of Frogs
There are a lot of frog type
baits out on the market right now, but in the lakes and rivers across
the country, the top producers for really big bass are the Tournament
frogs in half ounce sizes made by Snag Proof, the Spro frog, and The
Swamp Donkey by Reaction Innovations.
I use these baits in three
basic colors everywhere I go, because I have experimented with every
color these manufacturers produce, and I found that regardless of where
you fish, you really only need any of them in just black, brown, and
green. Yes, I have used a white frog and rat type bait as well, from the
time they first came out and were made popular, but these three basic
colors consistently produce the biggest bass wherever you fish.
Techniques
As I mentioned, the most
popular way to fish these baits is in heavy cover by casting them out,
letting them sit for a long while, then twitching the bait ever so
slightly, and if it doesn't get smaashed , then repeating the twitch and
pause and casting again. This does produce bass, but the first time I
discovered that this does not always produce the most or the biggest
bass was prefishing for a tournament on the Potomac River in Maryland.
I was fishing a cove where
there were bass by the hundreds in the three to five pound range, with
some even larger ones mixed in, feeding on frogs in the pads as the tide
came in. These bass did hit the frog worked slowly on
occassion, but I was outproduced 5 to 1 by an old guy who came in behind
me working the frog as fast as he could. It was ridiculous how fast he
was working it! He caught several bass right from where I had been in
the 6 and 7 pound range, and several others that were almost as big.
Experience had taught him that when the bass were in these pads and the
sun was out, by pulling the frog as fast as you could over these large
pads, produced a reaction bite that you couldn't match any other way.
When the bait came across the pads the sun produced a image of the bait
through the pads and the bass went crazy!
I reproduced this action on
several other bodies of water in the following years all over the
country using the same tactic.
The other thing that many
anglers just don't do is fish the frog in open water. I cast the frog as
I would any other topwater bait and work it with an erratic action
around cover and over submerged structure in open water. Dean Rojas
popularized this technique when he won several tournaments doing this.
I also cast the frogs all the
way up onto the shore and then slowly pull them into the water from the
banks, producing tremendous strikes when they enter the water at times.
Equipment
I like to use a heavy action
frog rod made of a composite material or fiberglass, in 7 to 7 1/2 foot
lengths, with a 65 pound braided line. It is really important to be able
to muscle these big fish around when they are in or near cover,
especially when they exceed 6 pounds. I also use a Shimano Chronarch
reel for this, as it has been the most reliable of every brand I have
used over the last 20 years.
Try
these tips this year and watch the size of the bass you catch in the
lakes and rivers increase ten fold! |
