BooyahMan

I was rather excited for September to come this year as last September was when I started to CONSISTENTLY hit frog fish (my favourite type of bass fishing!), and it just got better through October. However, it has been everything but so far. Up until this week I was at least getting strikes every trip on the frog but didn't connect with anything really worth mentioning. I thought it would get better the later into the year it got but this week I've been skunked on both of my trips, and not just with hollow-body frogs. I threw weedless swimbaits, swimming frogs, jigs, worms, buzzbaits...and nothing. I can totally understand not catching fish on a frog; I fish them way more than I should and do get skunked with them more than I care to admit, but the waters just felt empty even after throwing everything I could at them. I'm shore-bound so I'm stuck with fishing (receding) lily pads in 1-5 feet of water, and thus for now I'm stuck with weedless rigs. All my usual haunts aren't producing even though, as I said, they were pretty consistent last year at this time. I'm really hoping it's just a few off days and not indicative of what the Fall bite is going to be like. Not going to lie...I'm a little envious of everyone having a good Fall bite right now haha.

If the cover is VERY sparse then it is definitely do-able. I pulled in my PB using a Booyah Pad Crasher with 30lb Spider Wire strung onto a medium action 7' Shimano Compre but that was in October when most of the lily pads in my area have died off. I also used a medium action Daiwa Crossfire for a bit in the spring but after the lily pads got thicker towards summer I felt under-gunned, especially with anything over 3lbs. Long story short, if you are going to be fishing any sort of cover I would HIGHLY recommend just investing in a heavy action rod. You just might be saving yourself some heartache if a trophy bass decides to eat your frog.

I catch my fair share of bass right down to 10 inches on hollow-body frogs. Besides that, in-line spinners will catch tons of small ones too.

I definitely agree with those saying pinch your barbs if you are that concerned about it. As long as you don't let the line go slack while fighting, the hooks will almost always stick just as well as a barbed hook.

It sucks, but it's just something that happens when fishing. I've done it accidentally a few times with sunfish, and usually the hook isn't through their mouth but just through the eye itself. The worst one I experienced was hooking the eyeball on a Steelhead smolt while fishing for early season Coho Salmon. I didn't realize where it was hooked at first but when I tried to land it the hook "popped" off. I suddenly see the smolt swimming around in circles down the river, and upon inspection I found one of its eyes still attached to my hook. Luckily, this is a very rare occurrence. You're using a sharp instrument to puncture a fish in the mouth, and sometimes it just doesn't end up where it's supposed to be.

In my limited experience, the second you either a) feel the fish on the other end or see the frog disappear, rip it hard. Most of the time if I miss it's because the fish has missed and the frog has never gone below the surface of the water to begin with. If I can't see the frog before the blow up or if I'm in a position where feeling for the fish is not ideal, I wait until the splash from the blow up is "finished", which is roughly 1.5 to 2 seconds after the initial indication of a fish coming up for the frog. On occasion I still miss fish, but this has worked pretty well for me. Even the dink 10 inchers that grab my regular sized Booyahs fall victim if they get any bit of their mouth around the hook points. For what it's worth, I'm running 65lb braid on an Abu Garcia Black Max paired with a Cabela's Tourney Trail 7' heavy action rod.

Interesting! I personally have had very little success with spoons for pretty much any type of gamefish although my friends do slay trout and salmon on them. There are a couple of Gibbs Croc spoons in 1/8 and 1/4 oz in my my tackle box so I will definitely add them to the list of things to flog the water with. Thanks!

Thanks again for the info! Already looking forward to getting an opportunity to chase Smallies again next year.

Thanks Turkey Sandwich for the tips and personal experience! What size grub do you use if you don't mind me asking? I did try a 2"-3" grub (can't remember which) on a 1/8oz jighead but just got sunfish nibbling at it. Looks like I'll have to be more diligent following up on followers...no pun intended. I really wish I lived closer to a Smallmouth fishery as I truly enjoy hunting for them more than I enjoy hunting for their green cousins.

First fish on a jig! Largest Smallie that my better half has caught to date:

I am a HUGE fan of Booyah Pad Crashers. My two biggest bass came on the Jr. size, although right now I am currently throwing the regular size as the pads are quite thick and I'm looking for a bit more casting distance to cover more water. In saying that, I've still caught some real dinks down to 10" on the regular size! I've had limited success with the poppin' pad crasher but haven't had much of a chance to use it. Will probably dust it off in the fall when the pads get a little more sparse.

I always have an assortment of lures on me as I try to be covered for as many scenarios as possible. HOWEVER, when I'm specifically looking for bass larger than 12" in my local lake, I almost exclusively use frogs to the point where I really shouldn't be using them. I'm guilty of being addicted to top water blow-ups and because of this many times I get skunked or have very little success. You'd think I'd learn my lesson eventually.

Thanks again everyone for all your input. Just got back yesterday from a 2.5 day trip searching for Smallmouths and I'll be honest; even though I had a great time and the change of scenery was breathtaking, it was quite frustrating. Threw an assortment of stuff that included a bunch of crankbaits, spinnerbaits, texas rigged crawfish imitations and some jigs but the only thing that was consistently catching fish were the spinners that I had made, which was exactly the same as what I used last year. These spinners attract a lot of dinks so that's what we ended up catching most of the time. I was desperately looking for fish more than 12 inches long so I stuck to using the bigger lures while my girlfriend used my spinners. I struggled while she pulled in dinks left and right, although she was getting some action at least. On occasion she would see a much larger Smallie follow the spinner, and the real kicker was that she hooked the two biggest fish of our trip in spots I had just gone through with my other lures. The first one came on the first day when we were just scouting, but it shook the hook on a jump. Can't be certain but it looked to be in the 3lb range with a mouth and belly that looked more Largemouth-like than Smallie-like. She was pretty heart-broken when the spinner flew back at her after the fish went airborne, but she made up for it the next day by getting a slightly smaller one to the beach. We had never landed any Smallies over 12" up until this point so it was quite the achievement for us. On the last day I finished with my first fish EVER on a jig! Not a big at all (not even biggest of the trip) but I am ecstatic that I finally caught one. One thing I noticed that I should have noted last year was just how deep this lake is. Some of the spots dropped off into what seemed like 20 feet of water and I'm assuming a lot of my lures couldn't reach deep enough down to fish these locations effectively. All of the bigger fish we saw or hooked came shallow. I am also not used to fishing such deep water in lakes as my local bass lake is much shallower and weedier. As mentioned before I clued in after scouting it out and switched over to texas rigs and jigs but only got one fish from that. On one hand, I'm glad that a spinner that cost me maybe 20 cents to make was effective enough to get us some action, but on the other I was really hoping to find a more effective way to consistently find bigger fish. Anyways, here are a couple pics of the biggest fish of the trip that my girlfriend caught and a couple pics of my FIRST EVER jig fish! She kept rubbing in the fact that she caught this behind me as well as losing an even bigger one in the same scenario! Here's a good photo of the dink-slaying spinner! First jig fish...EVER! Close up of first jig fish...ever!

Hey guys. The pesky dinks and sunfish at my local lake like to take the tails off of my small (2"ish) swimbaits. Is there any way to salvage these to use for another day or are they good as toast? I don't mind if they tear up the non-rigged swimbaits but it feels like a waste to just throw out a pre-rigged swimbait that has an amputated tail. Anything I can do? Cheers!

Nuisance fish? What nuisance fish? When I target bass I only catch bass. All joking aside, where I am Bass are an invasive species and are considered a nuisance fish. I let 'em go just the same.

Once the big mouths get to this size, they grab my attention. Nice round 16 incher from tonight.

Man, that kind of sucks. However, it could have been a lot worse, like a trebles through the hand as Bluebasser86 said. At the end of the day, a lure is only a lure. ^I've found this to be the case as well. Not that I catch huge fish or a lot of them, but my two biggest bass so far have come on a junior sized Booyah. I've also found that pockets with frogs present generally don't have bass...or at least not ones that want to eat frogs.

I own one but have yet to use it; great to hear that someone is having success with it. The material seems a little thicker than most of the other hollow-bodies that I have, so I haven't given it a chance as I worry I will miss fish.

I'm good with any bass over 12", but the ones that are 16" or more grab my attention, especially if they have the girth to go along with it. 20"+ is a trophy for me.

^This. On the same day I've caught fish on both black and white, as well as yellow. From my experience anyways it seems like finding the right retrieval speed is more important than the colour of the frog.

Thanks for the tips guys! I'm super stoked about this trip; I hopefully will have something to report back after all your help!

As mentioned already by many, the Booyah Pad Crasher Jr. is a fantastic frog if you're looking for a smaller profile in the 2 inch range. I've caught Bass as small as 10 inches on them. I like the smallest Live Targets as well; shorter but a little bit wider than the Booyah Jr. The Matzuo Nano Kroaker is the smallest I've seen however the one I have took on water basically right out of the package. Maybe I got a dud.

First and second largest bass for me both came on a Booyah Pad Crasher Jr.

Tonight I was hopping a Berkley Havoc Sick Fish under some pads in about two feet of water when I felt a thump. Set the hook and got my first swimbait fish ever. The problem though is when I hear "swimbait fish" I think of something a bit bigger than this: Made up for it by nailing this chunky fish on a frog afterwards:

Rooster tails and hollow-body frogs!