Bass Inhale Surface Intruder Frogs in Southern States RIGHT NOW!
As a pre-high school kid in 1960 that couldn’t wait for summer so my buddy and I could fish for bass, I learned early that the biggest bass seemed to live in cover, especially near lily pads and in some areas under surface-matted weeds.
We discovered this quite by accident when our small motor quit one day and a strong wind blew us in toward shore where our 12-foot boat hung up on the edge of a very thick weed bed. Unable to move under power, the oars were tied down securely and we had to undo those, so following the protocol that we were taught by my dad, we did the next best thing – we dropped anchor.
OK, we were safe. A little scared and frustrated too, I asked, “Jeepers, why did we end up here?” Since I was always looking for an excuse to cast a line anyway and neither of us knew much about motors, we took out the rods and decided to wait for another boat passing by. This turned out to be a good plan.
We were five feet from the edge of the weeds and getting our lines out there into the wind would be tough. We tried anyway to no avail. All we had was hooks and split shots that we had planned to use to dunk worms and crabs along the weed edge.
I had just been gifted with a pack of Crème plastic worms, there were five in the package and of all things, they were sort of slimy and purple in color! Finding them in the tackle box, we threaded them on to the size 1 hooks we had and decided to toss them toward a tiny opening in the weeds. The wind was at our back now and this would be easy.
Of course, we missed the opening in the weeds and landed about a foot away. Not knowing anything about rigging weedless, we were hung up right away. The hook point was buried in the thick mat. We tried to pull it out, we could see it there, but it was firmly stuck. We didn’t want to break our new line, we had shoveled a lot of driveways to earn the money to buy this new Berkley “Cat-Gut” line (monofilament), because the guy in the tackle store said it was the best, the fish couldn’t see it.
Frustrated, we shouted at the weeds, hollered at the motor, screamed out loud at the wind and then the weirdest thing happened that nearly scared us both off the boat and into the water. No, it wasn’t lightening.
The weeds exploded! The noise from the splash near our lure was loud! It was a fish! More bellowing, more screaming, and finally, a broken line. Wow. Now some bad news bawling was in my mind, but we toughed it up. The fish was a monster with a very wide tail, that’s all we actually saw, but that’s all we needed to see.
We sat there bewildered. “Oh my gosh!” I shouted to my buddy. Did you see that?! “That was the biggest fish ever saw,” he said. I agreed. We tied on another worm the same way, why switch now” It was un-weedless, hook protruding and we got the same snag on the surface-matted weeds. This time, nothing. We did this about 10 times. We caught a lot of weeds.
Check out this blog for more info on hollow-body frogs, but note that the Live Target hollow-body frog is Number 1 in the ratings: http://bassjunkiesfrogpond.blogspot.com/2012/06/koppers-live-target-hollow-body-frog.html
On the 11th try, in a different direction from the original explosion, it happened again! Kabooom! A fish exploded on our weed-stuck, hook-exposed worm. This was no accident now. There were fish that actually lived here! The age of discovery had just occurred.
Soon after, a passer-by saw us and we waved him over to get the tow back to the dock and kindly thanked him for the courtesy. Both of us were still shaking from our encounter. We didn’t want to share this with anyone, actually, but we decided to tell my dad. He remembered there was an ad in the last issue of Field and Stream magazine about a weedless lure, a floating frog.
Now we couldn’t wait to get home. There it was on one of the last pages. We begged my dad to buy us one and after we agreed to pay him back for it, we dropped the stamped envelope into the post box and waited. Three weeks later, there is was, one solid-green color plastic frog that floated and had two hooks sort of buried upside-down on each side of the top of the lure, allowing it to ride the weeds without foul hooking, so it said. It was quite a weird-looking concoction to us at the time.
The instructions said to cast it right into the weeds. Two weeks later we did that. We went back to the very same spot where our boat had landed that windy summer day about a month earlier. This time, using a Bronson casting reel and 25 feet of 20-pound test black color braid line laying on the floor of the boat (casting it like a fly rod, these were old reels!), I casted the lure out to a small opening in the weeds. I missed. It went five feet past. I twitched the lure that glided smoothly over the weeds, it was almost to the opening now.
BLAM! A huge fish blasted the surface and sent weeds flying in all directions. I reared back to set the hook and pulled. I had the fish on! It was fighting and pulling back and it went down and buried itself into the weeds. After digging a bit, we did get the fish, a 6-pound monster largemouth! Excited was not the right word, both of us were ready to pee our pants.
Nobody else we knew fished this way. Over time as we grew up, we bought newer and better tackle, and watched ever since those early days in 1961, how floating frog lures have evolved to the highly technical manner of their shape and function today.
Since then we have worked to find the best of the best, there are many companies that market floating frog lures today. One of the most effective floating frog lures we have found is made by one company in Ontario, Canada, Kopper Fishing & Tackle. In the United States and elsewhere too, this incredible frog lure is marketed under the brand name of Live Target Lures. They are worth every penny they cost.
Why are they the best? Simple reasons. Quality construction, flawless in-the-weeds performance, flawless fish hook-up performance, easy and proper casting weight, tantalizing action – even in open water, and perfect color scheme options.
Gimme my rod! Gotta go!