By knowing WHEN, ta put it away!

I have this love/hate thing with the hollow bodied topwater baits. Frogs, birds or what ever, when they are crushin it, just like any other topwater, it’s a lot of fun fishin it. But unlike any other topwater bait I throw, bass can’t seem ta git it 75% of the time. Doesn’t matter if I fish it slow or fast, in the slop, over matts or out in open water, shallow or deep, they just miss that bait way too often and don’t commit to it. Nothing irks me more than when fish miss my baits. Even more so, I hate having to defend myself when fishing with Carpenter and he blurts out, “You miss another one Cooch?”   No dood, that fish just plain missed my frog, I never had a chance ta git a hook in em!”

The hook system, that double pointed thing, is flawed. There’s a reason why this is the only bait type that uses this style of hook and it just amazes me someone hasn’t come up with a better set up to improve our hook ups. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending a week fishing Frogs prior to and during the Snag Proof event here on the Delta. It’s a fun and challenging event, win or lose. But I’ll be damned if’n I didn’t listen to my own preachings the past week following some really good fishing and catchin’ bass on Frogs. Ya hear the old saying, “Live and die by it”, thank God I ain’t a cat, woulda been dead and in the ground this past week.

Partner & I missed two really big fish last Saturday first day of the event. Brian & I had several swirls on Tuesday, no takers. Thursday morning with my client I had 4 nice blows in open water, all missed. Friday morning first thing, I’m out on my own and go 1 fer 9 before I put it down and go back to catchin fish all day on my jig. Here’s the deal, and I know this! Drastic, cooling air temperatures, period. Cooling air temps, means cooling water temps, all this equals a slow down in the bass’ metabolism to think and commit to engulfing a bait on the surface.

Well, after missing my very first bass this morning on that frog, again, I finally mastered it and put the POS away.  I search thru the box and found my River2Sea D88 Bubble Pop.  Lights out now! These bass can swipe at this thing with two treble hooks all day and I’m gonna put em in the boat! And sure enough, over the next two hours, I put over 20 keepers in the boat this morning, fishing the exact same places I had been missing fish on that frog.  The vast majority of them, just swiped at it as they did the Frog, yet were stuck with that back treble hook. Those that engulfed it completely, were met with 6 unforgiving treble points and had no chance of escape.

I got so caught up in all the “hype”, the dock talk and the Snag Proof hang over,  I had forgotten that I have better tools in my arsenal for topwater fishing verses a hollow bodied bait with those worthless two pronged hook system when conditions change. There’s a time and place for each. By acting upon the thought that popped into my mind, “This is ridiculous, there has got to be a better solution to these non-committing fish”, and changing to that hard bodied popper with the treble hooks, I was rewarded with an awesome morning of topwater fishing.

The topwater bite here on the Delta has finally materialized with some consistency in the bass’ penchant to chase surface forage. Don’t get yerself caught in that rut believing The Frog, is the only topwater bite in town, it’s not. Of course, we’d have a hard time convincing Rosetti & Armondo of that this past weekend huh? HAR!