April 23, 2024
By Shane Beilue
Perhaps the best bite in bass fishing comes on a hollow-body frog in the extreme shallows, with the anticipation of the blowup from an aggressive bass only exceeded by the actual strike. There was a time when I was of the strong opinion that a topwater bait was only effective during the low-light conditions of early morning or in heavy cloud cover. However, the topwater frog has proven that some of the best topwater bites of the day come when the sun is at its brightest. In fact, I now consider bright skies as prime froggin’ weather.
Hollow-body frogs come in three basic styles: the walking frog, the popping frog and those with rotating or kicking tails that disturb the water on a steady retrieve. While any of these can be effective, let’s focus on the walking frog for this application.
THE RETRIEVE
Of course, the action of a walking frog is imparted with twitches of the rod tip pointed toward the water. Since the frog is considerably shorter than a walking topwater plug like a Zara Spook, abbreviated twitches of the rod tip will be all that is required to get the frog to walk properly. This walking action is what imitates a struggling or injured meal on the surface of the water.
One of the strengths of the frog is the weedless design, which allows us to target fish buried in the shade of heavy cover when the sun is bright and high, be it brush, bushes or vegetation. While the walking frog excels at being dragged across matted vegetation, I like to target shallow, isolated cover when the sun is high. Scattered, isolated cover gives the bass great ambush points in which to feed, but also puts them in rather predictable places that I can target effectively with the frog.
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FOCUS ON POCKETS
One of the most consistent places for locating bass with a frog during the midday hours of the warmer months is in the backs of small pockets and flats just off the main body of the reservoir. These pockets may only be a few yards in length and often don’t have any significant depth change leading into the pocket. You might say these are places that just don’t look that appealing at first glance. However, groups of quality bass move into these areas to feed and trap any available forage type within these pockets. These include bluegills, shad and even dragonflies hovering over shallow wood cover. It’s not uncommon to see bass leaping into the air to snatch a low-hanging dragonfly, which is a sure sign the bass have moved into these little flat pockets and coves.
When fishing through these pockets, target any isolated cover in the area and direct the frog right through the heaviest shade from the cover. This is a time to work quickly by running as many pockets in as short of a timeframe as possible to find the specific places the bass are utilizing. Many times, the bass feed within the same shallow areas on consecutive days, often starting around 11 a.m. and continuing until late afternoon. While you’d assume low-light conditions would also be effective for fishing through these areas, bright sun is when the bass move into these areas for short windows of time; the bass rarely stay in these areas all day.
TACKLE CHOICES
Frog fishing calls for heavy artillery. For line, 50- to 65-pound braid is a must, as the floating braid won’t hinder the action of the frog. Another great attribute of braid is it has no stretch, which is critical when driving the hooks home from a long distance.
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For rod lengths, the longer the better. Rods in the 7-foot to 7-foot 6-inch range in heavy to extra-heavy power provide the needed leverage for hooksets and directing fish back toward the boat. High-speed reels with 7:1 or 8:1 gear ratios get the frog back to the boat quickly between casts, yet still have enough power to horse a big bass out of cover.
Lastly, since the blowup on a frog is where the adrenaline rush and addiction derive, it's common to jerk the frog away from a bass when seeing the strike on the surface. The more disciplined (and difficult) approach is to first feel the bass on the line after the blowup, then set the hook. As challenging as this may be, the landing percentages go way up with this delayed hookset.
