Pad Frog

Frog Fishing For Bass

Catching Big Bass On Frogs

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, it 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!

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About the Author

Steve vonBrandt was sponsored by major manufacturers which included Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits, Okuma, Delaware Tackle, TTI-Blakemore, and Ambush Lures.

He was inducted into the NAFC Hall Of Fame in 2003 and was the 1998 Big Bass World Champ.

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