August in the South is not the most wonderful time of the year. The heat, the humidity, the bugs, the snakes. It’s a good time to visit Maine.
Some say you could actually move to hell to cool off. Which is probably true—Hell, Michigan, has an average August temperature of just 70 degrees, they tell me. (It’s not far from Detroit, in case you wondered. I don’t know if this is coincidental.)
But, those of us who have dropped anchor here in Dixie have learned to deal with August, in some fashion. And from an angler’s point of view, it does have one saving grace.
August is time to get froggy.
The water weeds that have been quietly growing like friendly domesticated plants all through May, June and July suddenly morph into massive world-swallowing giants that can cover whole bays almost overnight.
Much of the water turns into a vegetated gel with somewhat the consistency of pizza cheese, thick enough for herons to stroll across without getting their feet wet, and fishing becomes a physics problem—what lure will go through this morass at all, what lure might attract any fish so intrepid as to survive in said morass, and how could said lure possibly have any hooks of any design that would not instantly bog down before a fish could even think of attacking it?
Frogs are the answer.
The weedless frog, exampled in the modern iteration by the Snagproof Frog, which Harry Ehlers first devised about 1960, is a lure so precisely tuned to this malady of Nature that it has spawned an industry. No southern bass angler worth his Bass Pro Shops hat would think of leaving the dock in Dixie this month without a full complement of frog imitations.
Frog imitations are usually armed with double hooks which cradle the back end of the frog, with the barbs curving up against the sides. The body is crushable—they’re typically hollow soft plastic—so that when a fish bites down, the hooks get exposed and the fish gets stuck.
The great thing about these frogs—and there are dozens of brands now—is that they can be thrown into just about any sort of vegetation and come through without snagging or picking up debris. That makes them nearly unique among artificial lures, with the possible exception of an unweighted Texas-rigged Sluggo worm.
Plus, during August, many fish in the deep south plow well back into lily pad fields and under floating mats of duckweed or water lotus for shade. So, when you drag that frog across their roof, they just might come busting up through to eat it.
It’s not only an effective way to fish, it’s down right exciting when the bite is on, which it typically is from now until early October, when the fish on most lakes come out of the cover and start chasing shad in open water.
Most major lure companies make some good snag-resistant frogs. I particularly like the Z-Man GOAT ToadZ, which you rig yourself with a single oversized long-shank wide gap 5/0, and the Berkley Swamp Lord, which has double hooks. SPRO’s Bronzeye Frog and the Booyah Pad Crasher are favorites of many anglers, as well.
You can throw these lures into the middle of a pad field or atop a carpet of floating moss and hydrilla and they will come back clean almost every time.
Just make them look like a frog—pop-pop-pop and hesitate. Rinse and repeat. The fish can’t stand it.
In fact, the tactic is so inviting that both SPRO and Snagproof have tournaments specifically for frog fishermen. (You have to fish the frog like a frog, though—a guide friend of mine at Guntersville won a bunch of money in one of these events a few years back by putting a 1-ounce weight on his line ahead of the frog and fishing it as a Carolina rig on the main channel drops 20 feet down to catch the winning bag. Others in the contest were not amused.)
If you’re interested, SPRO has events on Lake Havasu in Arizona (another place which has much in common with hell, in terms of heat) and on Lake Guntersville. Check them out here: https://www.jotform.com/form/253013852255149.
– Frank Sargeant, Editor, The Water Wire