Bass fishing is made up of many memories while on the water. One of my best memories is fishing an SPRO Bronzeye frog across a patch of pads. You make your cast and walk your frog to every pad opening you can find, just to see it disappear from your sight as it gets flushed from a bass lurking underneath. Is there any other bass tactic that gets your heart pumping or piques your excitement as much as frog fishing? Let’s put your frog fishing tactics to the test. I hope to arm you with something that you may not have tried before that will help you the next time you tie your favorite Bronzeye frog onto the end of your line.
Put More Odds In Your Favor
Looking closely at frog fishing, you see it is done on two fronts. First, if you want to go deep into the cover, you’ll have to arm yourself with a different setup than you will if you are targeting the outside edge of the pads or cover. If you’re going into the pads and going hand-n-hand battle, you’ll have to beef up your rod a little more to get the bass up and out of the cover coming towards you before the bass can bury you up into the cover and get off.
Heading into the pads, I’ll arm myself with a 7'3 to 7'6" heavy action rod teamed with a 7:1 gear ration reel spooled with 50lb to 60lb Sunline FX-2 braid. My choice of bait is a SPRO Bronzeye Frog. It's easily the best frog on the market today. Through the years that I have been frog fishing, this is the frog that has the best action and holds up to whatever you can put it through, catching countless bass along the way. One of the best things about an SPRO frog is it is made around a sticky, sharp Gamakatsu Hook. I have never bent out a hook like I had before I started to use the Bronzeye. The material that the frog is made from is soft enough to collapse on the bite but strong enough to hold up to everything a 5lb bass can dish out.
When targeting the outside edges of the pads, I switch up my bait choice. I will go from a frog to the SPRO Bronzeye Popping frog. The reason for the change is the calling power of the Popping Frog. It acts like other popping topwater baits in its past but goes further. I can get a great popping action out of the bait and use the bait's walking power to get the bass's attention and trigger action to create strikes, but the key is weedless, like all the other Bronzeye frogs in the family. I will use a 7ft MH baitcasting rod teamed with a 7:1 gear ratio reel spooled with 30lb Sunline Asegai braid for the Popping Frog. I use a lighter braid for this as I get more action out of my frog from the less line drag. I can also use a smaller size braid to cut pad stems as the bass fights on the edge. It helps me get the bass out of the cover quicker, cleaner, and into the boat.
Tweaks That Equal Better Results And More Bass
When it comes to frog fishing, I learned some of these steps from the Frog Master Dean Rojas. Dean is the one who put frog fishing on the map. He has worked many hours refining his frog fishing patterns and worked with SPRO to help develop the best frogs on the market. Many of the Bronzeye products we all fish today are due to his hard work on and off the water.
Open The Hook Up Slightly
The first tip that Dean taught me was to take pliers and open up the hook points a little. Take your frog of choice, and ensure you have a secure grip on its nose. Put your pliers behind the hook point (past the barb), and try to move the hook point up slightly. Make sure you do both sides. If you open the hook points too much, you’ll quickly learn that your frog will get hung up more if you have gone too far. My pattern is to tweak each hook slightly and fish the frog, is your hook-up ratio better? If yes, leave it; if not, try another slight tweak.
Keep Your Hooks Sharp – Check Them Often
During your fishing, make sure your hooks are sharp, and closely examine the hook points. Make sure your points aren’t bent down or up. You are using a stiff, heavy action rod and a line that has little or no stretch, you’re driving a hook into the bass' top of the mouth with bones in it. The weakest link of this is your hook point. Make sure your hook points are straight and SHARP. Take a few seconds after you unhook a bass and lightly feel the barb to the point to ensure the hook point is still straight and sharp.
Regarding the sharp point, do the fingernail test. Can you get the hook to grab your thumbnail? You need to touch up your hook point if it won’t and just scratches your nail.
Trim The Legs
When trimming the legs, you’ll change the action of the frog, so ask yourself what you want your frog to do. If I’m fishing a frog in the pads, I don’t touch the legs; I leave them at the length they are when I take them out of the package. Yes, I’ll get my frog to walk through the open areas, but it is also about keeping the frog in the open area just a little bit longer from time to time, which will trigger a strike. So, I will leave my frog legs as this helps trigger more strikes.
Popping frogs is a different story. Yes, I generate some strikes of the calling action of popping the frog, but most of the strikes are created off the walking movement of my frog trying to get away from the cover. There are two thoughts here. If you keep the long legs that come out of the package, you’ll cut down the side-to-side action of the popper, as the longer legs create drag and affect the distance that the frog can move forward when you’re working the frog. On days when the bass stays close to the cover, this is the action you want. Work a standard popper in this case.
On the other side of the coin, there are days when the bass wants that walking action to trigger a strike. If you cut the legs in half, you can get the frog to walk back and forth better, as the legs aren’t creating drag on the bait, allowing it to have more freedom and move farther with each twitch. In my box, I carry Poppers with untouched legs (long) and trimmed legs (shorter) when that bass is looking for more action out of the frog.
Snap Or Tie Direct
Many days, I will use a snap to start. I’m trying first to figure out what the bass want that day and what action they want from the frog. Using a snap allows me to change different frog configurations and quickly adjust frog choices to see if I can generate a strike.
When you tie directly to your frog, you can get more action from the side-to-side movement. It will have a wider swing from the bait (it is easier to walk) than when you use a snap. But there are days that the bass is looking for less movement out of the frog; in that case, I will use a snap. It also helps to get a better pop out of the frog as the weight of the snap weights that nose down slightly enough to get a better pop out of the frog for calling power. I often have two rods on my front deck, one with a snap and one without. Once I figure out what action the bass want that day, that will be my lead rod for the rest of the day. But I will also make a switch when I think I should generate a strike. I cannot tell you how many more bass I have gotten to strike the alternate frog that day.
Always Have A Follow-Up Bait Close At Hand
When fishing, a frog or a popper always has a second rod rigged with a follow-up bait nearby. Picture this: you’re working your frog across the surface, and a bass blows up on your bait but misses. The best thing you can do is let the bait sit for a few seconds without moving the bait. I give the bait a few slight twitches, trying to keep the bait in place; I don’t want to move the bait too far from the bass' sight. I'm trying to get the bass to come back and strike the bait again, thinking the frog is wounded and cannot move too far (it is an easy meal to come back and eat). After a few pops and pauses, I’ll reel the bait back to the boat and adjust. I will pick up a backup bait I have rigged (my backup bait choice is a jig). This is KEY!!! Do not pitch the bait where the bass blew up on your frog pitch/cast it about 2 feet in front of the blowup spot. If you cast back to the blowup point, that bass is now past that point, and the bait will land behind it, and often, that bass won’t see the bait fall.
When the bass came up on your bait, you moved that bass forward; he is looking around to see if it could find the bait again and try to strike. When your jig hits that water, that will be what the bass needs to see the bait and strike again. If I had to put a number on it, I could turn half of my missed blowups into hooked-up bass with this follow-up tactic. Use this to your advantage. Looking back, I can remember many days I have had more blowups and misses than bass over the side of the boat, but by using the follow-up presentation, these are memories of days in the past.
I hope this helps you get set up and start fishing with one of the most exciting ways to catch bass today. Beef up your equipment, grab a few SPRO Bronzeye Frogs and Poppers, and hit the pads. Be careful; frog bites are addicting!!!
