My Grandson asked me if fish would eat a frog. I told him most fish would eat a frog, especially Bass. That inspired me to try my hand at making a frog I could throw with my fly rod. The legs are bucktail, the body is deer hair. If they don’t work, I guess I could use them for Christmas tree ornaments.
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If those don’t work there’s something wrong with the fish. They look spot on to me!
Looks a lot like a frog I’ve seen in my fly tying books. I’m sure you have a winner.
Frogs make me giggle, and I’m definitely chuckling at these! They look fantastic!
Rootski,
I enjoyed your recent bass fishing piece and was inspired to wet wade a local trout stream turning smallmouth stream with the fly gear I’ve fished before with spinning gear. OMG! It was high water, tight quarters, trying to roll cast deer hair bugs & weighted buggers with no fly line to work with. It brought me back down to Earth. You had the challenges of everything: high current gradients & bulky flies but at least no wind. I managed one small fish and one cute one. You definitely get a respect for the guys that can throw those big bulky flies and the ones who can throw controlled mends on the cast.
Those look great!! You won’t have an issue getting fish to eat those!
Nice job on them frogs! I wish I could stake hair. I like the color also!
Tegg, In close quarters like that it helps quite a bit if you shorten up your leader. When you’re roll casting, you’re trying to throw the fly line and drag the fly along with it. If the leader is too long, then you’re trying to move the fly by throwing the leader. The leader is too light and won’t do it. A short, stiff leader works better for me. I even do this when trout fishing on a small narrow stream. This is also a case where it helps to “over line” the rod. For example, use a 7 weight line on a 6 weight rod. The heavier line will load the rod better even with less line out. Sounds like you had fun. I’ll bet once the water drops a little and with a slight modification to your setup, you’re going to really nail them!
I actually thought about shortening leaders but in hindsight of course. I always hear about being leader conscience but don’t always practice it. Sometimes I end up just trying to fish thru it. There were other distractions though with the high water, faster current, fallen trees, etc. It was one of those 10 minutes away fishing outings where you throw a couple things in your pocket and go. It turned out to be a better “lessons learned” outing or “what will I do different next time” which can also be good. Whether I catch fish or not I always try to make it a goal to get good drifts when I’m fishing the stream environments.
Nice looking frogs Steve. Are you putting any mono weed guards on them?
Hi Randy,
I haven’t had much luck with Mono weedguards. If they’re stiff enough to make the bug weedless, I start missing fish. If I use softer/thinner mono for the loop, I get stuck anyway. And it’s tough to keep the Mono lined up parallel with the hook. I leave the weedguards off and fish around the obstacles and occasionally pull a bunch of weeds off.
Now I do have a pattern I like to use in tough situations. It’s a deer hair diver tied on a 2X long streamer hook…upside down. For the tail I use several long saddle hackles that are splayed out to act like outriggers. The hook rides up like a spinnerbait, and it’s behind the collar of the bug. Using the long streamer hook gets the hook point out there where it can do it’s job better. That bug will slide through some heavy thick cover and has accounted for some nice fish over the years.
great idea on flipping that hook up
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