I am going to resurrect this thread rather than start up a new one...
Anyway, I LOVE frogging. It's probably my favorite way to fish, and up here in Minnesota, a lot of our lakes are THICK with sloppy vegetation right up to the surface, and in many of these lakes, if you want bass, you have to be willing to fish that stuff, and frogs are by far the best way to do that.
For starters, I really believe that it doesn't really matter much which frog you use in the fish's eyes: if they are in the mood, they will bite on anything that closely resembles a frog, mouse, or small bird on the surface. The one thing that DOES seem to make a pretty big difference is color. We did a lot of frog fishing on Saturday and my buddy was using a leopard frog print while I used a white frog that almost never produces strikes, but that day, I had 3 times as many strikes as he did working the same spots from the same boat.
I always liked the cheap snag-proof frogs. The green one was my go-to frog for a long time, and some of the biggest fish I have ever caught were caught on these. I still like to use these, but recently, I finally broke down and decided to give the Spro frogs a shot because I heard they cast a lot better and it's true! I hate to say it, but the extra cash you pay for these things are SO worth it to me. I can literally cast these things 3 times further than I can cast a plain ol' scum frog or snag proof, and that has made frog fishing far more enjoyable for me: I can work from further from shore and still hop them up on the bank, and I can work MUCH more water this way per cast. It sucks losing them to those **** pike for what they cost, but I think it's totally worth it.
As for hook-sets... Aside from the adjustment period when I first started frogging (it takes some practice to figure out how to effectively set the hook when frogging) I have no problems setting the hook with ANY of the frogs no matter which hooks they have on them, and I think I know why some people have a harder time than others do. Watching my buddy and comparing his technique to mine made me realize why he misses more fish than I do. I tend to work my frogs nice and slow. Each twitch is very short, and I work a frog on one cast for the amount of time it takes him to make 2 casts. I also pause. A lot. 90% of the time when I get a strike, my frog is sitting still, and just about every time I get those strikes, the bass has it INSIDE his mouth and probably almost halfway down his throat (especially with the bigger fish: the dinks miss a lot more I have noticed). As soon as my frog disappears, I let the bass pull the slack out of the line and then I hit em HARD. My buddy doesn't have this luxury because his frog is moving more. He would get strikes and set the hook, and most of his fish that he actually manages to bring to the side of the boat are hooked in the lips, whereas my fish almost always have the frog pretty far down inside their mouths. They jump and shake, but they almost never throw my frogs because both hooks are buried pretty well into the roof of their mouths.
I think when they grab his frog, they actually get a chance to feel how un-natural it is because they probably actually "bite" the frog with their lips and spit it out sooner. But if they get a direct hit on a frog that isn't moving, they are looking to swallow that thing whole. Like I said, I let them run with it for a few seconds before I set the hook, and it works almost every single time, whether it's a cheap $4 snag proof or scum frog, or a $10 Spro. Those hooks sets almost always hold strong.
That's just my two cents anyway: there isn't a right or wrong way to frog... It's fun no matter how you approach it, but I like to share what works for me...
