Courtesy of Vance McCullough

 

Fall bassin’ and frog fishing got together like peanut butter and jelly. The vegetation has peaked, forming the densest mats we’ll see all year and the baitfish want to move shallow just as the bass start to put on the feed in an effort to fatten themselves before winter.

An influx of bass that have spent the summer in deeper water will make for competition among the fish and that competition is often what triggers a frenzy when there would otherwise not be one.

But, as for the resident fish in these same mats, your fishing buddies have shown the hollow-bodied lures to them all summer so it’s time to add a few wrinkles to your frogging game if you hope to score some pressured bass on fishing’s most exciting lure!

Try these tips:

Go bigger – the baitfish have grown since the shad spawn of early spring. Now is the time to match the hatch in terms of size, more than anything else. Also, an oversized version such as the Spro Dean Rojas Bronzeye King Daddy Frog casts well and sits with more weight and a wider footprint to help bass find it in what have become the thickest overhead mats of the year. Gear up with a stiff rod and heavy braided line – hopefully, you’ll need it.

Go smaller, but louder – not to contradict the advice above, but so often when dealing with pressured fish a down-sized offering is the answer. Scum Frog Popping Frogs are small in size but make a deep sound that calls bass out of dense cover. The ‘bloop, bloop, pop’ song is a great imitation of the noise made by feeding bluegills which means that by going smaller you might actually attract larger fish that prefer to catch a single bream rather than chase several smaller shad. And, because they were just introduced this summer, many bass have not seen these cool little lures yet. Be the first to show them off on your lake!

Accessorize – and make them your own. Do anything to differentiate your lures from the hordes of fake amphibians that have crawled and bumped their way over the mats all summer. Add rattles. Rattles not only raise a racket, but they add weight which helps a lure push down on the mat, offering obvious advantages. My favorite rattles are free-floating BB’s rolled into the body cavity via the drain hole. Small jingle bells, old tiny worm sinkers, scraps of soldering wire, anything that will rattle around and add weight will work. The more creative you are with your choice of rattle fodder, the more unique your lure will be. Nothing else will sound like it!

Another alteration involves the length of the frog’s legs, or the absence of them altogether. I learned this decades ago when the rubber legs of a Snagproof frog melted together in a tackle box under the Florida heat. I cut them off flush at the base and found that bass dialed-in on the lure with more accuracy than before.

Since then, I have cut the legs off a few of my lures but that first one, which I’ve named Lieutenant Dan, since as Forrest Gump pointed out “You ain’t got no legs, Lieutenant Dan” remains my favorite – yes, I still fish it. A good frog is that durable. I even boat-flipped a 3-foot gator with it (my two buddies from Tennessee that I was fishing with didn’t find it as funny as I did. No idea why I haven’t been invited to fish with them again). It’s still one of my absolute favorite toys. But Snagproof has revamped their lineup to include newer incarnations that work just as well. Again, they might work even better if you alter them to fit your specific needs.

Take a different tact with your frog fishing and have some fun this fall!