Tournament Fishing- Frog Bite

[crankbait]

I was fishing a tournament on Greenwood Lake this past season and decided to put a Frog on and fish the weeds and docks. The fish were real responsive to the frog presentation, but were not getting the frog fully and I couldn't get them to commit. My question is....Has anyone had this happen and did they make an adjustment to get them in the boat...? I tried slowin' down and another color and speedin' up but this did not work. I also used a jig and a senko after the strike with no help...These fish were 3 lbs. and up so they were not small and just missing. Sometimes they would get up on top of the pads and I could see them before they went back down without my frog. :-[

[fishfordollars]

Happens to me a lot. I just use them for a search bait and then followup with a trick worm or some other plastic. They will usually eat the followup lure. Good luck

[Tokyo Tony]

Sounds like you did all you could do. If you miss them with the frog and they don't hit the follow-up senko, I don't know if there's anything else you can do...maybe a t-rigged plastic in the pockets?

[Pigsticker]

The trickworm and senko follow up advice is very effective.

I usually just keep fishing the frog, usually bass that completely miss it are very small in my experiance and it is better to just keep fishing

What I can suggest is have two different soft plastic frog designs on hand. I usaully start out with a frog that is very subtle, such as the Gambler Cane toad. Then I switch to a frog that makes more splash, I use the horny toad. Use them both in the spots you have missed fish and then move on.

You did not say if you were using a hollow body frog such as the Spro Bronze eye or a soft plastic one like a Gambler Cane Toad.

You will miss a lot of bass with the Spro frog and similar style frogs like that. I do not know the true reason why, but I think it has something to do with the constant movement of a soft plastic frog.

100% of the time I use the soft plastic style but I have seen that on average that you get less bites with the hollow body frogs and the hook up ratio is much lower than soft plastic frogs.

[senko_77]

Change your retrieve.  If you were bobbin the bait, walk it, and vice versa.  When they are hitting but not completely committing, it means that your close to having the right presentation, but you need a small change.  You said you already changed speed and color, so that is the only thing I could tell you.

I'm also assuming that you were using braid/heavy rod?

[FD.]

Sometimes they just will not eat it.  I throw a frog all year long and sometimes they will inhale it and somedays they will knock it out of the water without a hook up.  It's just the way it is.

[zbass]

Another thing on the soft plastic frogs. You can let them sink after a miss. Used to throw a weightless flipin' tube as a frog and would have a greatly increased hook up ratio. The soft plastic frogs are the same way. There are days where they prefer one frog over the other and other days where flippin' is the way to go. You did what a lot of people, including myself, would have done.