I was fishing a local lake that is just full of lily pads along the shore with good size pockets (2-3 feet between bunches).  Used ragetoads and spro frogs along with one of my favs a moss boss through the pads.  Had a ton of strikes but none of them seem to kill the bait to allow me to set the hook.  There was even one spot where I had 8 misses and saw the bass jump out of the water to try to hit my bait.  I guess my question is are they just biting it because its in the territory or in this case should have I switched to a smaller bait to allow them to engulf it?  I know topwater you can expect a lot of misses but this just seemed crazy.  

Slow it down a bit! When one misses just "kill it". Let it fall and a lot of times they will hit it again!

I did try slowing it down but that didn't seem to help. So you don't think a smaller lure would help?

If you say none are killing it enough to get a hook set than probably not! Unless they were smaller bass, than it might help! Why not try a hollow body frog that you can pause. That usually gets the job done for me when they are short striking!

Sounds infuriating. Maybe you could run a buzzbait over the same spots. Put on a trailer hook and see what happens?

If you were from around here I'd say they were gar. :

Do what Dw said ,and also keep a slow sinking bait like a senko,trickworm,fluke,or t-rig worm handy to follow up with.

They were probably dink bass smacking out of aggression and it does happen with this type of fishing.

I am pretty big on the frog bite myself,any-who I was fishing about two weeks ago with the same problem.I started to treat them like I was bluegill fishing, small mouth bas......To barely even twitching the frog every 1/4 inch with little to no movement and they started to choke the bait with a slurp, wild never seen that in all the years I,ve been fishing.

If you were from around here I'd say they were gar. :

Do what Dw said ,and also keep a slow sinking bait like a senko,trickworm,fluke,or t-rig worm handy to follow up with.

They were probably dink bass smacking out of aggression and it does happen with this type of fishing.

Funny thing was me and my friend saw a dead gar on the shore of this lake though not anywhere close to were we were fishing.  Though never caught any in this lake but maybe I just haven't fished it enough.

A smashing topwater bite is a thrill fer sure, but I gotta tell ya,  some of the biggest bass I caught on topwaters sucked the bait in so gently I barely knew I had a strike.

So you never know.