When do you usually fish with them and where.
i find late spring and early to mid summer to be the best times for a slew of reasons, a few being that frogs are spawning that time of year and should be all over the place, in the heat of summer many bass will be hanging out in the shade under the water lillys so throwing a frog on top of them is like a pizza guy knocking on the front door. also i find a great place to fish frogs is under over hanging tree brasnches, lots of stuff like baby birds and small mammals , ect tend to fall out of these branches and into the water and bass know this so they hang out under these branches waiting for some unlucky sucker to make a wrong step and fall in. you can actually fish frogs in open water with great success if you know what type of structure lies below. obviously you dont want to juts start throwing out into random open water all day and hope for a bite but if there is a break point or little drop off or some other similar type of structure nearby try tossing a frog past it then slowly working it above these areas and the fish will usually be waiting. also as with all topwater lures bright sunny days pretty much make these lures useless unless the water is very shallow, reason i say this is because you want some clouds or over cast so when the bass look up at the surface they arent "blinded by the light" (lol) if the sun is very bright they wont see much of anything vs a nice overcast day they will get a nice silouette of your frog and be able to pinpoint it. on the flipside if you are fishing very shallow water (1 to 3 feet deep) the fish will most likely be cruising just below the surface anyways and should be able to lock on to your frog relatively easy.
i should also add for anyone new to frog fishing if you plan on fishing them on pads i would invest in a flippin stick and some heavy braid if you dont already own a frog setup because when fishing the tops of pads and a bass blows up on your frog the first thing its going to do when he knows hes hooked is dive into the lilly stocks and tangle you up and you need to have some heavy gear to muscle them out. i throw my frogs on a 7' 6" medium heavy extra fast tip flippin stick with a lews speed spool reel spooled with 50 lb power pro, braid will saw threw lilly stocks like a hot knife threw butter.
thanks. That will definitley help me fish with frogs. also do you use shiners?
i have yet to use shiners for largemouth but i do use them on smallies at wachusett. one more great piece of froggin info that was tought to me is to try and always have a spinning reel with 15 to 30 lb braid spooled up and a weightless senko worm rigged on a weedles hook. when frog fishing you have the potential to miss alot of fish for many reasons but the big ones are fish can have bad accuracy and barely hit or miss your frog all together, if you set the hook too early after a topwater blow up, or fish spitting your frog because you waited just a bit too long to set it this is when the senko worm comes into play, when you miss a frog fish reel that frog in out of the way ASAP and toss the worm in the same spot that the blow up just was and 9 times out of 10 your frog fish will still be there frustrated and angry about missing the frog and will hit the next thing that falls in front of their face . the old guy that showed me this called it "the rope a dope" lol i just call it a " one two punch" either way frog fishing is very fun imo and can be very productive under the right situations. good luck!
yea if you work frogs good enough you can catch them anytime from spring to fall. the areas I normally fish very weedy places filled with lily pads and the first thing I throw is my frog. like brooksy I throw a 7 foot 6 rod as well along with 30lb braid. its probably my favorite thing to throw just to see the bass attack it is awesome. I don't fish shiners to much though. I normally stay away from live bait eventho it works really good