Jaderose

Been a bit since I went out so I took some time and went fishing today. As the calendar now says June, I knew it was the beginning of my favorite season. FROGGING! Anyone that pays any attention to my posts at all know I am a HEAVY frogger. I LOVE it and consider pretty much all other fishing techniques as just something to do until the frog bite turns on. I am an unabashed Scum Frog fan. I have all the others but 98.2% of the time, I have a SF Trophy Series tied on. I picked up some of the new Launch Frog before the season started and took ONLY them out today to see how they compared. I should also say that I refer to my style of frogging as "combat fishing". There is nothing finesse about it. I do not walk frogs between lily pads. I throw heavy frogs out on heavy mats and bring them back in fits and hops to raise a ruckus. The color or even appearance does NOT matter. The Launch Frog....You really can throw this thing a mile with very good accuracy. Unfortunately, that only one of 2 things I liked about it. The other was the hooks were very sticky. With the exception of one lucky lady, all fish hooked were boated. I liked NOTHING else about it. For one thing, it's WAAAAAY too Soft. Dragging this thing across mats and over stumps would cause it to distort. When it distorted, it picked up slime and debris. This happened on EVERY cast. The weight system causes the nose to ride low in the water. It did not glide over the top of the mats. I had to keep the tip of my rod pretty high to keep from dragging in 20 lbs of muck with every cast. If a fish even looked at it, it would foul the hooks and I would have to spend a couple of minutes picking it clean. Every fish brought in an insane amount of muck with it because I was forced to keep my rod tip so high and couldn't get them up and ski'd over the top of the mat. The cast....they really do fly but it's a crap shoot on whether they land right side up. If they land upside down, forget it. You now have a mess. SF brought the hooks out away from the body a little the way a lot of people modify their frogs. I am not one of those people. I wanted to like this frog. I really did. I bought 5 of them and honestly have no idea what I will use them for. I will most likely modify them a bit to see if they can be salvaged. I suppose if you like frogging pretty clean water, these will work just fine. But not for me. Will stick with my old tried and true SF Trophy Series. Sure, the eyes come off and they are about as subtle as a hammer but they get the job done for me. Time after time. The other thing I will say about these is they do not have the same SOUND as the Trophy Series when they land after a high arc cast. The Trophy's have a unique *SPLAT* that has caused many blowups for me as soon as the frog lands or alerts bass to find it and causes blow ups at first movement after landing. *Addendum* I'm not saying this is a bad product. I'm just saying that this frog does not line up with my style of fishing. It is another quality offering from Scum Frog and even though it's one of if not their most "premium" frog, it's still priced below most other brands.

I can't imagine a bass fisherman NOT using a Texas Rig

My thumb basically IS my brake and I can't imagine that would ever change even if I did buy a DC reel. Glad you're enjoying yours!

This! GOD YES, THIS! This is site is a great refuge from all that. Thanks for that!

Lol...this looks like a crew I would go out on the water with any day of the week and probably get my butt handed to me.

Lol. Relax, ya old Codger. (we're exactly the same age). You know how to fish. Get yourself a reel you like ( I still love my Pflueger President after about 10 years), spool it up with Sufix 832 (I like about 8-12 lbs). Tie on a Gamakatsu 3/0 EWG with or without a bullet weight in front of it with a Palomar knot. Throw a Senko or Stik-O on it if weightless. If you put the weight on it, you can go cheaper with a Yum Dinger or you can use a tube, craw, or anything else you like. Forget the leader. Go fish. P.S. I feel the same way when people start talking about things like what cameras they use to film their fishing. My eyes glaze over and I'm immediately disinterested. I'm not shooting a movie here and I cannot imagine that anyone is interested in watching me fish on youtube. But hey! You do you!

"This seems like a big year for frogs here in Missouri. Scores of tadpoles around the banks on my trips so far, and many frogs of all sizes hiding around the moss edges and some lilly pads here. " Agreed. Been a couple of weeks since I've been out but all the signs have pointed to an EPIC froggin year here in NOWEMO. I'm pretty jacked. My frog rod is screaming to be used.

I agree with basically everything you have said and I too have their rods and reels. They are good products that are competitively priced. My old PQ's are warhorses that have just gotten better with age. My old green "Power Hump" Extreme rod is STILL my favorite rod and I held a JM Signature casting rod the other day that felt fantastic in my hand. What ISN'T competitively priced are their prices on name brand soft baits and lures, iMHO. I'm not a hater and I enjoy wandering around a BPS but I'm not paying a buck or more for soft baits and 2 or 3 dollars per hard bait more at BPS that I can other places just because they want me to pay less for THEIR brand that they knocked off. It's not even that a lot of their knock offs are bad. Stik-O's are great baits. Their square bills and tubes are great. Their Kermy frog is TERRIBLE. It's just a predatory business model that turns me off. I buy from there, sure, but it's definitely not my first choice and based on what I see on Bass Resource, isn't too many others, either.

I guess I am spoiled. The little lake I consider my "home" lake is out in the boonies. There is a pretty limited amount of area for shore fishing and I don't fish there anyway. There are no pleasure boaters and most of the time, I'm either the only boater on the lake or know the one or 2 others that are there and we all like and respect each other and give each other space unless we're out BS'ing on the water. I've shared baits with them and them with me. I've had one or 2 incidents with landlubbers but nothing too serious. Yelling at teenagers to clean up their mess....that sort of thing. Nothing major.

My home lake, Happy Holler, in NOWEMO is my white whale but that is why, year after year, an 80 acre lake can keep my attention and keep me excited. Most days, you will work for every fish you catch but it has it ALL so it keeps things interesting. You want rip rap off a dam? Got it. You want shallow flats? Got it. Shallow points with sharp drop offs? Yep. Creek channels? 5 of them. Standing timber, stumps and or laydowns? Filled with them. 25' deep brush piles? Of course! Heavy frogging mats with plenty of shaded areas for the middle of the day summer frog bites? Everywhere. The first time I saw this little lake, my first thought was "Holy ****, look at this place!" Now, 12 years later, when I get there, my first thought is always "Holy ****, look at this place.". It is my paradise...BUT...it's not easy to fish. There is SO much habitat that a lot of the areas that you KNOW should be holding bass simply aren't. It has taken me a long time to figure out basic patterns on this lake to consistently catch fish. I haven't been skunked in a long time but I have MANY days where I might average one fish per hour. The bite can get tough enough to make things interesting and occasionally, the fishing God's will give me a fantastic day to keep me going. I can't begin to guess how many people have asked me about Happy Holler and why I always go there because they can't buy a bite. I just tell them that she's a hard mistress that demands attention and devotion. If you don't give her that, she'll turn on you.

Like most on here, I love TW and will continue to....later. I have found other avenues to get the, admittedly, small number of items I need throughout the year. I do my restocks around Christmas with all the deals and gift cards. For now, I'm getting the things I need from other, and often smaller, companies I enjoy working with. Having to pay extra for expedited shipping from TW for my little orders just isn't worth it to me. They will rebound or they will wither, die, and someone else will take their place. As long as it isn't Johnny Morris, we'll be fine. Does anyone else think it's odd that we aren't really talking about BPS? Does ANYONE buy from them anymore, other than stik-o's and square bills? I was just in a BPS a couple of days ago. Got some Paca Craws that were a whole dollar more expensive per bag than you can get online. I do not understand their business model anymore. As far as I can tell, they are basically a tourism company now. It was 9am on a Tuesday, the store had maybe 10 people in it (old guys like me) and people still bugging me about signing up for vacation packages. It's like..."Good Lord! Leave me alone"

I fish 5" Senko's until they get torn up. Then I fish a 4" Senko or 3. They all fish fine on a 3/0. They'll catch fish. Toss em as usual.

As stated above, huge sections of the country simply lack the infrastructure necessary to make this feasible. My kids MIGHT see the total transition but at 53, I do not expect to ever own an electric vehicle. Not because I dislike them or have any issue with them, but because I live in the sticks in Northwest Missouri. There is virtually NO infrastructure here for them.

Reminds me somewhat of the Culprit "Fire and Ice". I've caught a lot of bass on those, don't see why these would be any different.

Sounds like you'll be right in the sweet spot for that rod. I know others might say to use a LONGER rod but I personally like a 6'6" to 7'4" rod so tie it on and enjoy! As far as the line, I've used 30lb braid for heavy frogging. It's more than enough for what you're doing

Sounds to me like it would be perfect for it. I can't see any reason to go heavier on your line.

Green Pumpkin, Black/Blue (pretty much any variation), Morning Dawn, PB&J, Bubblegum

Those look great. Never paid much attention to their soft baits. Might have to give them a 2nd look. Their hard baits have always looked pretty cornball and over engineered to me. Not saying they don't work, just that they don't trip my trigger.

So I managed to acquire a whole mess of Roland Martin's Helicopter lures (for free) over the weekend. Never really paid any attention to them and now that I understand it's basically a gimmicky buzzbait, I can't wait to actually give this thing a try. For a laugh, of course, but I can see where this thing might actually work in areas I might usually throw a toad. I guess we'll see!

This is your answer. Get yourself some JJ's clear and you're ready to roll

Pit Boss Rage Craw Brush Hog Yamamoto Kreature

I don't think women are as susceptible to the mental illness that is being an obsessed fisher of bass!

Buy your first baitcaster in the middle of winter and spool it up with inexpensive mono. Practice out in the yard. By the time spring rolls around, you will be good at it and ready to go after digging all the backlashes out of that cheap frozen mono. If you try take your first BC out to actually fish with no practice, that will be a very frustrating experience for you. also.....any hook can be used for wacky rigging. You don't need to ask 78 different times.

As a person with a titanium cage built around his fused spine to hold everything together, I cannot imagine spending more than10 minutes in a kayak without being crippled

Honestly I think any "prejudice" I have against BPS hooks has to do with the shape more than anything. I have them intermingled with my Gammy hooks in my hook box and if I absent-mindedly pull out a hook and get a BPS, I tie it on and fish with it with no problem or worry. If I'm actually looking, I choose a Gammy. I just think it's a "cleaner" design and the hooks seem to be sharper. I have a lot of them and will most likely use them for years but probably won't buy them again when I need to stock up. The only BPS branded product I ABSOLUTELY do not like is the Kermy frog. I bought one of the kits a few year back to try them and lost the brass belly weight on all of them. They suck!