Among the reasons to fish from a kayak, simplicity and sheer fun rank high, along with the ability to access water unreachable by other boats. The same can be said for fishing with a hollow bodied topwater frog. The weedless wonders can pull giant bass from otherwise impenetrable cover.
Sure, I follow the K.I.S.S. rule (keep it simple, stupid) in fishing as in other areas of my life, but I also have another rule of great personal importance: my K.I.F.F. rule (keep it FUN, fool).
Let’s face it, if it’s fun, you’ll do it more and you’ll do it better, whatever it is.
And, while you can catch a lot of bass on the old standby frog colors of black, white, and sometimes chartreuse, you can catch a few more and have that much more fun by rounding out your repertoire with a couple of offbeat colors.
I’m not even talking about matching the local hatch or mimicking bream in shallow cover or throwing an ultra-realistic shad pattern in open water. Those horses have been beaten dead. Let’s talk instead about a couple of somewhat secret hues that trigger bass for no known reason other than the possibility that the fish haven’t seen them before. After all, kayak fishing is as much about exploring new water as it is anything else, so exploring some funky color options fits the mindset of most ‘yakers.
First up, RED. Dead red. For whatever reason, and those who know will attest to this, when bass are on a wide-open frog bite, a red one will often trigger the biggest fish in the wolfpack. Red can be the base color or just an accent on the belly or nose, but it will get noticed. The bite will be explosive. It’s every reason you throw a frog to start with.
On the other hand, if fish are only slapping at your frog, no matter the color, change cadence first, and then change colors if need be.
Another oddly effective color is blue. A mainstay for jigs and worms, maybe it should come as no surprise that blue, especially with some black in the scheme, will attract bites.
Scientists tell us that bass lack the color cones necessary to see blue, interpreting it as some sort of gray scale hue. For this reason, it can never be the wrong color. Sometimes, it’s just right.
In any event, you’ll likely be the only angler on your water throwing a blue frog at fish that have seen everything else by the time the grass mats out across the surface.
My favorite is a color that’s not exactly unusual, but it has taken a back seat to more ‘natural’ patterns in recent years. Y’all get on the bus – the big yellow bus because we’re going back to the old school. Yellow, often in combination with black is a time-tested standby that produces as well as any color in the tackle box, day in and day out. I still catch fish on the first frog I ever bought, a quarter-century-old Snagproof model in the ‘Tweety’ color which has been recently overhauled by the company into a similar but different pattern called ‘Duckling’. It’s more realistic and as Major League Fishing Pro Cliff Crochet demonstrated for me in person, just as deadly as ever.
While straight yellow will work, particularly on smaller frogs, I believe the contrast of a bright splash of color against the flat black body is what catches the eye and helps bass zero in for the kill.
Put some childlike imagination and fun back into your bass fishing by adding an extra color or three to your frogging. You might even catch more fish.
