Catch More Fish - Frog Fishing- Tips and Techniques

Top Water Explosions

There is something incredible about frog fishing and throwing that frog across the body of water and slowly working it back, side to side, twitch after twitch, then BAM!, top water explosion.

Frog Choices

With so many frogs on the market, how to do you decided what to grab off the shelf and tie on? There are quite a few manufacturers out there that make great frogs. One I have been partial to lately is the FishLab Rattle Toad frog baits. FishLab is a new brand, and they really hit the nail on the head with their introduction of the Rattle Toad. The attention to detail on these things is amazing.

Frog fishing the FishLab Rattle Toad — FishLab Rattle Toad

The Rattle Toad has on over sized chamber mounted directly in the head area giving these frogs a tremendous amount of noise drawing in big fish from great distances. They have a floating leg which gives the frog a natural presentation when sitting on top of the water. And really really cool thing, they offer a monster 3 1/2 inch Rattle Toad. For me, frog fishing hasn’t been the same since these came out at ICAST 2019.

Rigging for Frog Fishing

While frog fishing, I like to give the frogs as natural of a presentation as possible. In doing that, I like to tie a basic loop knot so that the frog can move freely as it is not locked down by a stiff knot.

There are many ways to fish frogs with all sorts of presentations. I will discuss my two go to, that should cover what you are doing as well. Open water and structure.

Open Water. For myself, I define open water as any water that does not have structure right on the surface. Any water with grass, leaves, branches, pads, etc., I consider Cover Water.

In my rigging, if I am fishing open water, I will fish braided line with a fluorocarbon leader of only a couple of feet. This leader will give some invisibility to the frog as you work it across the surface. If I am fishing Cover Water, I will generally go straight braid. What that means is that I will tie my Rattle Toads directly to the braided line. Since the frog is being pulled over structure, the line doesn’t have to be as invisible as the bass are coming out from underneath on a sneak attack.

Frog Fishing Gear

For my frog gear, i like a 7’3″ to 7’6″ Heavy to X-Heavy rod with a good amount of backbone. Something like the Okuma Tournament Concept rods. I really like the TCS-C-731Ha as well as the Okuma EVX series. Specifically the EVX-C-751Hb. Both are awesome rods that you can really load up and set the hook on.

For a reel, I prefer the Okuma Helios SX and Okuma Komodo SS baitcast reels. Both of these are aluminum bodied, long casting reels with a tremendous amount of drag. In fact, up to 20lbs on these compact reels, which is pretty incredible.