grprahl

Live in the Twin Cities, but do most of my more serious bass fishing up north between Grand Rapids, Duluth, and Ely. I'll look into that too.

All good input. Sticking with the braid is the fall back if I don't find anything better. I have read quite a bit about the titanium leaders. I also found a product called "knot 2 kinky" that's a single strand nickel-titanium alloy which, as the name inplies, resists kinking and can be tied in knots. I might experiment with that as well.

Well, I am worried about visibility, but I know that fluoro won't be any worse (and would likely be better) than the 65lb braid I know they'll hit on. A steel leader could have a little more glint on a sunny day in shallow weeds. The other thing would be trying to snell it onto a straight shank hook for flipping. I realize that fluro won't work 100% of the time, and I'll still get bit off. But if I only lose $15 in tackle over the course of a day vs $30, over the long run that would be a big win.

I know there's a lot of guys out there that use 20-25lb fluoro as a leader on their braided setups in clearer water and tying with blood knots or uni-uni. I don't care as much about invisibity as I do abraision resistance for pike. There's small tournaments where my buddies and I stopped fishing because even if we won, we lost so much $$$ in jigs and tungsten weights that the winnings weren't worth the gas and entry (getting bit off with 65lb power pro usually). I was thinking about using something like a 2'-4' section of Seaguar blue label in 40lb or 50lb to tie to frogs, tungsten flipping setups, and swim jigs. Does anyone have experience using the real heavy fluorocarbon? Is there a more preferred knot when tying the braid to the much larger diameter (0.016" vs 0.024-0.026") fluorocarbon? I'm thinking I'd probably have to slide a piece of heatshrink over that knot to help it slide through the weeds better anyway.

Me too. When tying direct to 20lb or 40lb braid, I still get bit off by maybe 1 out of 8 pike, but usually you can at least get them in the boat to retie and save the tungsten.

So my buddy and I were out tournament fishing last weekend. Up in northern MN, the swim jig bite was hot. All day we were catching fish on 3/8 swim jigs burning them over submerged vegetation flats, pitching to docks, and working deep weed edges in 10-16 feet of water. We always loved how versatile they are, but we got to thinking. What if you used a modified "punching rig" to do the same thing? Because the one thing that swim jigs can't do, is work through really heavy cover. For example, if you get a frog blow up in slop, you can toss in a punch rig and get the follow up strike, whereas a jig usually picks up a lot more of the vegetation and slop. So the idea is, take a pegged 3/8 oz tungsten weight, punch skirt, and straight shank flipping hook with a good swimming trailer and you'd have the ultimate all around bait. It would be something you could use to work deep weed edges, burn over shallow flats, pitch to isolated cover, and punch through light slop. Before I go out and spend hours testing the theory, has anyone tried this? I tried searching and didn't come up with anything too specific.

Thanks for the tip, I'll look at those too. Do you know of any one-stop resource or book that goes over each and every variable and explains what does what that you know of? Or does that info just come with a lot of trial, error, and little bits of info gathered through years of experience? I would love to learn more about rod science overall.

What are you opinions on this rod? (I can use the excuse that it can be used as more than a frog rod to justify purchase ) Shimano Convergence Casting Rod 7'2" MH with Fast taper line 10-17, lure 1/4 to 3/4oz. It would probably be able to give me much better control. The only question would be if MH is enough to horse them out of the thick pads, which I think it might. This rod would be much more reasonably priced as well, but only IM-7.

Thanks for the replies. Interesting that a couple people noted that the rod may be on the long side for fishing frogs. I have noticed that the accuracy is somewhat hard to control and walking is difficult but not impossible. Never knew it could be from too long of a rod. Frog weights I've been using are 1/2 oz I believe, mainly spro's and sexy frogs. Reel is Abu Garcia Revo STX with 65lb standard power pro. I'm sure that carrot stick I used was a much lighter braid, which probably contributes as well, but I don't think I could lower the diameter. Up here in MN/WI, you often catch 50:50 pike and bass when frogging, and some of those 10lb pike wreak havoc. I'll certainly do some more research on the super slick though.

The rod I currently use for frog fishing is a Shimano Clarus Flipping Rod 7'11" Heavy with an Extra Fast taper, line wt 15-30lb, lure weight 3/8-1oz. I've used this for a year, and it's a little front heavy, but I plan on adding some weight to the handle. However, my biggest question is about casting distance. I can already cast the frogs pretty far with this set-up, but I used a friends 7' MH carrot stick and cast the little thing a mile, though it didn't have near enough backbone to pull fish from the slop. This led me to think that the current rod I'm using maybe isn't the best frog setup for casting. Shimano makes a frog specifc rod in their Crucial line. It's 7'9" Extra Heavy, has an Extra Fast taper, line weight 12-25lb, and lure weight 3/8-3/4oz. It's considerably more expensive than the Clarus I currently use, but most of the specs seem about the same (similar length, same taper, same minumum lure weight). Would I make considerable benefit from getting the crucial as a frog rod and using the clarus just for flipping? Or should I just save the >$150 and keep using the current rod?