Anybody know the trick to actually landing fish with this lure? I get tons of strikes working this lure along brush piles or the shoreline. Not sure what I am doing wrong? I set the hook on a lot of lures...but I just can not hook a fish with this particular lure. Frustrating because some of them are nice fish. Is there a design flaw or operator error?

When u get the strike, count out for 2 seconds of so and then set the hook. It takes a little practice when fishing frogs for lmb. This assumes they are large enough to get the bait into their mouth.

Operator error. Weedless require totally different hookset per Tracy.

Same thing using a Pop-R top water, with it wait till you feel the fish then set hook.... hard to see it hit and then wait

Mark, also occasionally squeeze your frog to drain any water that may accumulate inside the frog. I always wear shades when fishing topwater lures, as there's nothing more fun than dodging a a set of hooks flying back towards your head at 100 mph on missed hook sets.

Mini-hijack: Tracy, have you ever tried Smack-N-Shad's from Redemption Outdoors? A tad expensive, but they're made from cedar, and replaced the old Yellow Magic's as my favorite topwater bait.

The first rule of frog fishing is you are going to miss. A lot.


The next rule is count to two Mississippi before you swing and you will miss less. The bucket mouths need to drain out the water so you can actually catch the hook.

Braided line helps.

Al, nope, I have not fished the bait but I would not mind giving it a try. My favorite early morning top water is the Spook and walking the dog. One of the pleasures I get from the pond is trying out new baits, or new colors. Every so often in my shopping for lures or new colors in worms or flukes etc, I will buy a color and then not give it an honest shot at catching a fish and will go back to a favorite. But at the pond I will dig out those baits that have been laying around for some time now and fish them.

Thanks guys I will try those delay tricks. Al I will purchase a Smack-N-Shad...looks like a good company too!

My favorite topwater frog bait is the old wooden Dalton Special. When the LMB are hitting the top at the edge of a weed line... it's on!

With any kind of topwater chugger/walker/ popper thing, don't set the hook until you feel the fish. If you can't feel him, he don't have it.

Thanks Augie.....some of the old vintage lures are pretty cool

Paw Paw Wotta Frog

Tracy, it took me years to learn, but our pond fish haven't seen classic baits. I'm not sure what comes after a zillion (yeah, I know, a zillion and 1), but I bet old Rebel Humpback Rattlers, and Mann's jelly worms would work as well as they did 30-40 years ago. Most LMB don't read Bassmater magazine.

Al, I tried a Texas rigged senko for the first time the last couple of days. Hits came less often than on my 4 inch jigworm, but I did catch four LMB in 90 minutes. Some seriously ambitious CNBG actually tried to swallow the senko, couldn't quite manage that. (Maybe when they get to 2 lbs???) What with weeds and ferocious HSB, some pushing 8 lb, my jigworm setup on 6 lb test ended in too many breakoffs.

Love topwaters & frog lures, but the strike to catch ratio is always a challenge. I've found that fishing at night yields best results, as I am slower to react to a blowup I can't see. Nothing more exciting than a big bass leaping in the dark!

As I set here this morning on this laptop, it is setting on a glass topped coffee table where under the glass are old fishing lures and fishing tackle. A 100 yr old fishing bobber, a Langley Fisherman's DE-LIAR scales with the box it came in and many old fishing lures. Old wooden frogs and one of my old favorite top water lures, the Humpback Mule Back in the 60's I caught many a lmb on that old bait. And how many of you guys remember the Sonic crank bait? I think it was the first type of crank bait that I remember fishing a pond with. I am not a big collector of tackle but I try to have a few that I grew up with. If I was as handy on posting pics as many of you guys I would show a few of them. Oh, I did not fish with the 100 yr old bobber lol

should only be using braid on that top water frog.. mono has to much strech to set those thick hooks on that spro frog... you can get you a 35lb braid with the diameter of 8lb mono... and again, like the others said.. ..wait 2 seconds before you cross their eyes!

A trail hook might work well for you in this scenario.
Just add slide another hook over an existing hook.

its a double hook.. normally trailers are for spinnerbaits.. ..

A weightless Senko, rigged wacky, is a killer bait for bass. Put a splitshot up the line if you can't stand waiting on it to sink, or if you're fishing in current.

I use 15lb test braid on a spin rod for fishing them. It holds up pretty good in the weeds.

30 years ago we used Sluggos. Not a lot of difference between a Sluggo and a Senko.

I don't do a lot of fishing for LMB these days. Probably have five or six dozen Sluggos left over from back then.

I might ought to get some out and try them next time I hit the river for HSB. I bet they'd work just as good as the $10 six packs of swim baits that are popular now.

Tracy, when I was a teenager I loved lure ads that claimed it was banned in 17 states because it caught too many fish. Never could figure this out based on my own experiences with the "killer" lure!

I've discovered that the slower the drop, the more bites I get. Most of the time, anyway. Patience is a virtue, though not one I find easy to cultivate.

The rainbow sluggo continues to be in my tackle boxes today. I love that bait in the fall, a big fish bait when I dead stick it. I figured it's because of it being the same size as a yoy forage fish that had been born the previous spring. Bacons tackle shop in Shreveport still sells them. And as far as the wackey rigged sinko, it is one of my go to baits. It is a fish catching bait for sure. Black with small red flakes or the watermelon with blk flakes are my first to be fished depending on water color or daylight.

If you do any stream fishing for SMB or trout make sure you take plenty of the bubblegum color Senkos.

We call that one the Pink Stinko. It is my A Number One go-to bait for stream fishing.

The fish literally will fight over those things when you drift it out of the riffle into a pool.

I've had days where two bags of them wasn't enough to make it to the end of a nine mile float.

It looks like lots of companies make soft lures that look like Slug-go and Senko.
Bubble gum is just basically a shade of pink right Augie?
What length senko worked well in stream, 4", 5" etc?

Yep, bubblegum = pink.

I like the 5" for the streams here in Missouri.

There might be days when the 4" would work better.

I did try some of the 4" Sluggos way back when. Wasn't crazy about them, but I was probably fishing them wrong.

When I feel the need to downsize I switch to a 4" do-nothing worm.

Tracy, watermelon seems to work well for me, too. Have yet to try the bubblegum color, but I know some people swear by it.

Do you use a ring on the wacky rig, or maybe one of those heat shrink gizmos?

You must have some large stream fish to inhale a 5 inch senko! Can't wait until one of my CNBG gets big enough to pull this off, they are already pecking at it. Best guess they'll need to be larger than 1.5 pounds, I don't think any are quite that heavy now but next year may be a different story.

If its in open water with no moss or weeds flip the hooks around you will catch them then. by flipping the hooks around so they are on the bottom it will no longer be weedless.

I've got a 7lb brown trout on the wall that came out of the Meramec River many years ago. MODoC quit stocking browns in there after a couple big floods wiped out all of the rootwads and graveled in several of the best holes. They still stock rainbows and there are a lot of them 16"+ in there. 4lb SMB are not uncommon, and there are several 5lb+ smallies caught in the Mac every year.

The upper part of the Current River is loaded with trout. Several miles of it are managed as a trophy section. That stretch is loaded with 18"+ rainbows and browns. No soft plastics allowed on that section, but the section below holds a lot of big fish too. Further downstream it transitions into smallmouth water.

Same deal on the Niangua, except there's no trophy section, so no restriction on soft plastics. Several miles of really good trout water, then many more miles of really good smallie water.

Missouri is great place to live for people who like to fish. We have a lot of variety here.

I've never caught a BG that was big enough to inhale a 5" Senko. I got into some RES at a conservation area lake a couple weeks ago that could have done it. The biggest one was 12.5". He's in my pond now, along with a few of his buddies. ;-)

My family has fished the Meramac for five generations now. I love that place.

I second Augie's senko advice. I would only add that cracking tube baits with a lead head across the bottom is a second favorite for me, but the strike patterns from the SMB can be tricky.