Frogging Tips From Dean Rojas
April 23, 2008
Imagine, if you will, an early morning cove filled with hundreds of yards of untouched shallow water lily pads, and it’s yours for the taking. There’s not another boat in sight, and no broken-pad trails through the greenery, either.
Your first cast gets smashed by a four-pounder. Two throws later a three pounder gets hooked. By now your adrenalin is racing at warp speed and when a seven pounder hits, you somehow let it dive behind a log, saw your line apart, and break free, taking your only plastic frog with him.
This type of scene is one veteran Arizona pro Dean Rojas has experienced several times over, but with one exception: he always has more than one plastic frog with him. In fact, half the lures in his boat today are frogs, and he generally has two or three rods pre-rigged with the plastic, hollow-body lures. Losing one – even though that’s rare for Rojas – simply means picking up another stick and getting on with business.
That’s because three years ago Rojas designed what has since been one of the best-selling lures in the United States, the Bronzeye Frog. He and the manufacturer, SPRO (www.spro.com) have since produced the slightly smaller Bronzeye Jr., and a larger frog, the King Daddy, will be available soon.
The frogs have won him tens of thousands of dollars in tournament prize money and big fish awards and in so doing Rojas has completely re-defined our interpretation of how to fish these remarkable lures. You don’t need lily pads or grass before you can fish them; in fact, you don’t need any cover at all. You don’t need shallow water, either, because when fished correctly, they’ll pull bass out of deep water. They work best on heavy line (Rojas uses 65-pound test braid); and rod action is critical to overall hookup success.
And it started just five years ago when a friend showed Rojas how effective frogs could be by skipping them underneath overhanging tree limbs.
“After his second or third four-pounder, I decided there might be something to it,” Rojas laughs. “At the time, I was actually looking for the right frog with a high hook-up ratio. The lure I was using had some good features, but I was modifying it heavily to gain the characteristics I was looking for.
“I used this particular frog a lot during the 2004 Bassmaster Classic on Lake Wylie where I eventually finished fourth, although I was leading going into the final day. That summer at the ICAST show in Las Vegas, Tim Norton of SPRO hired me as the first bass pro to promote their lures, and at the same time gave me the go-ahead to design my own frog.
“The three Bronzeye frogs we have now are all the result of that day my friend took me fishing to skip frogs under the tree limbs.”
The original Bronzeye (now the medium size) was designed around a double 4/0 Gamakatsu hook already in existence, and once he had a lure, Rojas had to learn to fish it – to learn its capabilities – and in so doing he’s developed some very non-standard frogging techniques.
Walking the Frog
“I use this technique when I’m target fishing, such as around isolated laydowns or through a stump field,” says Rojas. “The reason is because ‘walking’ the frog just like a topwater popper keeps the lure in the strike zone as long as possible.
“You can not only keep the frog in the same place with a lot of action, you can make it turn and it nearly backs up.”
For this technique, Rojas trims about an inch off each “leg” to reduce drag in the water; the more you cut off, the more the lure will want to walk and the more side to side action you’ll have.
“The second key to walking a frog is using 65 pound braided line and keeping as much as two feet of slack in your line after you cast,” Rojas emphasizes. “To make the lure walk you’re just shaking this slack line with your rod, and you’re only cranking your reel a little to move the lure slightly forward.”
Rojas tested a lot of different lines before he settled on the
65 pound braid. He dislikes monofilament because it stretches too much and that stretch reduces your hookup success. Even 50 pound braid is too light, because while it casts a country mile, it also may break when a big bass hits.
The final key is to use the proper rod. Rojas designed his own for Quantum because he couldn’t find what he wanted – a 7 foot broomstick with an eight-inch fast tip. This tip is what allows him to throw slack in his line and walk the frog.
Chugging the Frog
“This is the type of retrieve most often used with a frog,” explains Rojas, “a steady and fairly fast presentation across floating and matted vegetation. This, in fact, is how the entire frog fishing technique developed on Lake Guntersville. Each autumn the lake’s milfoil mats on the surface and frogs are one of the most effective ways to fish it.
“When I chug a frog across surface vegetation, however, I use a very slow stop-and-go presentation rather than a fast one. I think this gives the fish a better strike opportunity and you get better hookups.”
With this retrieve, Rojas does not trim his frog’s legs, and he still moves the lure with his rod, not his reel. The rod tip is down and continually jerking.
“When I’m fishing a frog, I use a fast 7:1 reel, too,” the Arizona pro continues. “A lot of times when a bass hits a moving lure like this, it comes straight at you because it’s been chasing the frog. You need to get the fish under control immediately, and the faster reel takes up slack line with just a couple of turns.
“I think the thing to remember about frog fishing is that fish are going to relate to whatever cover and structure a lake has, so you can, and should, expect a strike on literally every cast. Because I have caught bass on rocks, sea walls, grass, laydowns, and even in open water without any visible cover, I want to put everything in my favor that I can when that strike comes.
“That’s why I use a fast reel, 65 pound braid, and a very stiff rod. The instant a bass hits, I can get control of it.”
Most consider frogs to be shallow water-only lures, but not Rojas, breaking another long-held tradition. While he readily acknowledges the lures do best in depths less than 10 feet, what he really looks for is shallow water very close to deep water, and if he can add cover, so much the better.
“I don’t like sheer rock walls or bluffs,” he says, “but rather, areas where channels run close to a shoreline, or where a shallow shelf drops into deeper water. Then, if I can find vegetation or overhanging tree limbs, I like it even more. I probably like wood cover more than vegetation, and I know I’ve caught larger bass around wood than around greenery.”
With the Bronzeye Frog now in three sizes, Rojas has recognized there are times when one size definitely out-performs the others.
“The original frog, which is now the middle-sized one, is the one I use most often,” he says, “and it’s a good all-around choice when you’re just getting started on a lake and don’t know what mood the bass are in.
“If fishing is tougher, say in colder water or if you’re fishing a lake where the overall population is small, then the smaller Bronzeye Jr. can be a better choice because it doesn’t intimidate smaller fish.
“On the other hand, the larger Big Daddy may well become a big fish bait, even though it isn’t really that much larger than the original Bronzeye. You can move more water with it with a chugging retrieve, so you might also want to fish it when the water is a little choppy, as well as when you’re fishing extremely thick cover.
“It’s the kind of lure that can a lot of attention to itself. I’ve learned frogs have a lot of enemies out there, most of which want to eat it. My lures have been followed by turtles, snakes, and even birds, so you know bass will be after it, too, wherever you throw it.”