Big female bass holding in open water can’t resist zigzag movement
SPLOOSH!
With that one loud splash, a miserable morning on the water suddenly showed promise even though my plastic frog reappeared on the surface of the 200-acre lake.
“Aw man, she missed it,” I hollered.
I let the white lure sit still for a second and then gave it a couple of quick twitches.
SPLOOSH!
A second later, I felt the definite tug of a fish and this time I reacted with as strong a hook set as I could muster.
“She’s on, and it’s a good one,” I told my fishing partner, bass pro Pete Ponds.
A few seconds later, I lifted an 8-pound largemouth, a big fat female that was bulging with eggs just ahead of the approaching spawn, into the boat. Ponds and I traded a high-5.
“That may be the ticket,” the B.A.S.S. Elite Series pro said. “If they are out here holding on the edges of the spawning ground, they might get all over that frog. This could be great.”
Ponds was excited because the situation was perfect for a new plastic lure created by one of his sponsors, the Scum Dog by Mississippi-based Southern Lures of Columbus.
Three hours and about 75 fish later, Ponds had his proof.
“The key to this lure is its effectiveness in open water,” he said. “You can walk it like a top water plug like a Zara Spook, you know the walking the dog type motion. The Scum Dog is designed to give that zigzag walk and bass can’t stand that.”
Fished on 7-foot heavy action rods and 60-pound braid, the soft plastic lure has enough weight added to make long accurate casts. It sits slightly nose up in the water, which makes it easy to walk the dog.
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We kept throwing it that morning and the fish kept blasting them, usually with a savage attack that left little doubt there was a quality fish on the line.
“In Mississippi, we always equate throwing a frog around vegetation, like around lily pads at Barnett Reservoir after the spawn, but this is totally different,” Ponds said. “I’ve been finding that pre-spawn females are vulnerable to this kind of lure after they have left the beds and are staging on the first drops.
“If you notice, all the fish we’re catching are outside the shallow edges. We’ve caught a few up in the vegetation, but even then it’s been on the deeper edges.”
The lake we were fishing, a private and well-managed one in Central Mississippi, offered varied fish habitat, ranging from pockets with pads and other surface vegetation, to clear banks adjacent to a creek channel. The Scum Dog consistently drew strikes in all areas. We started in overcast and misty conditions, and finished under blue skies. They bit all day.
SPLOOSH!
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If you’re thinking that sounds like fun, you’d be right.
Ponds was soon calling shots, and all of them began with casts that put the frog back in shallow water and working it out to where the bigger females were holding. Any kind of break in surface features produced a strike.
A few times, a buck bass working on his bed in the shallows would get the lure before we could work them out to the deeper edges.
“When you get it to walking and it gets over the tops of their heads wherever they are holding, they can’t resist it, whether they are in a foot or 5 feet of water,” Ponds said. “This is an absolutely perfect situation.”
In the weeks ahead, Ponds said the fishing will change dramatically, but by the end of April, the frog bite will return.
“The females are sitting out here waiting for the males to finish building their beds and for the other conditions to be right,” he said. “Once the water gets a little warmer, and they are calling for that next week, they will move up on the beds and it will get tough.
“Then the females will move back out and they will be right back out here where we are catching them now. They won’t be as aggressive as they are right now, so a surface lure like the Scum Dog will not be as effective right after the spawn. You can probably catch a few, but we’d probably have to switch to something like a crankbait, a spinnerbait or a worm and fish down.
“But, once they settle down after a week or two in post-spawn, buddy, they will be right back on the frog and it will be fun again.”
SPLOOSH!
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SPLOOSH!
The best sound ever.
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