Froggin'

Middle of the summer and the bass have moved off the bank. Not necessarily to deep water though. I have caught bass in deeper water, but most of the success is staying tight to cover. Lilly pads, moss, grass beds, and other muck has been the place to go. In the mucky, murky areas the only baits you can really throw are weedless baits like frogs. Thats okay since bass are hunting frogs in the cover. Ive been throwing Spro and Booyah hollow body frogs as I usually do, but my real success has come on soft plastic frogs. The Zoom Horny Toad has been the go to. They can be rigged with the normal wide gap worm hook, but they tend to get destroyed pretty quickly on that set up. I have found that the Stanley Ribbit Double Take hook has been a great way to go. They are solid in terms of being weedless, have been consistent in getting solid hook ups and the frogs last a lot longer with the cork screw top. My favorite color horny toads are watermelon red, and bullfrog. I am throwing these into nasty muck. Typically it is a sporadic retrieve of 1-4 twitches and then a pause. If the muck is really thick I tend to retrieve it a bit faster and try to make as much racket as possible until the frog reaches a hole or open spot in the muck. Then I let it pause in the openings. They tend to hit it when it is right near the edge of the muck, but typically not in it. My feeling is that they see the frog, but wait to strike until they have a clear shot at it. The bass dont come flying out of the water on these like they do on the hollow body frogs. However they do hit it very aggressively just under the surface and you still see quite a show. I have found that my hook up ratio on these is significantly better than on the hollow body frogs. Part of which is the fact that the fish are not exploding out of the water to get it. With the frog just under the surface they seem to be able to get a better hold of it, which means the hooks are getting a better hold on them. This is the best summer I have had in a while and a large portion of it is due to these little frogs.



Keep froggin'!

Pictured is the set up from the Zoom website. I prefer weightless.

nice

Fishing overgrown swamps and mucky places is my thing. I still love the zoom horny toad. I have also started using some stuff from bog baits. The floating frogs allow a slower presentation and the floating snakes are fun as well. I still love the stanley ribbit double take hook. I find the hook up on the soft plastic frogs with a double take to be far better than hollow body frogs.

Check some of this stuff out:

http://bogbaits.com/

i may have to give them a whirl'

in the end i always go back to my good ol rubber worms tho

I am a soft plastics junky.... The worm is something I have gotten away from. I find that when I carolina rig I use a lizard. Most of the time its a weightless super fluke or a horny toad. I also picked up some great topwater frogs and snakes from bog baits. I also like the small fluke or a wacky rigged soft plastic stick bait (yamomoto usually) on a drop shot for small mouth. I dabble with trick worms a bit and will fish tubes at times (usually for smallmouth).