Popping frogs can have either body style – soft or hard plastic. The defining feature is a concave face that catches and spits water when the bait is twitched on the surface. Both styles create more surface disturbance than their companions without this cupped mouth.
Popping or chugging topwaters are nothing new, but anglers are discovering that there are times with a realistic frog look is more effective than the traditional style that mimics a baitfish. Plus, this style of lure is simply fun to throw and catch fish on.
The popping hollow-body frog is effective in open water as well as on top of the slop. These baits, such as the Booyah Poppin’ Pad Crasher, create fish-attracting pops and splashes when twitched in open holes in the weeds or can be worked right off the weed edge and into open water. This is effective during low-light conditions when bass move away from the grass into open water to feed.
The bait’s style and action also makes it effective in combinations of cover, such as shoreline grass mixed with wood cover, and especially in newly flooded areas of pasture grasses, briars, buck brush and floating debris. The weedless properties of the hollow-body frog helps it come through and over these snags while the concave face kicks up a surface disturbance like a chugging bait.
A hard-plastic popping frog like the Rebel Pop’N Frog still walks-the-dog on the surface but adds more splash and commotion to attract fish from farther away. It’s the bait-of-choice in more stained water and in windy or low light conditions, and for small waters such as ponds and small natural lakes.
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