Occurred to me on short drive to the gravel pits that not only had I not been there for awhile, it had also been precisely that long since I’ve held a spinning rod in my hand. Granted, it has been a fine year on the fly so not surprising, but these overgrown and brushy quarries are best assessed first with “cast anywhere” tackle and then maybe some flyfishing if growth of greenery & lay o’ the land permits such tactics.
Kicked it off with a gray mop jig and experienced mediocre results which means a few small bass for a lot of territory covered. Suspension fishing F’n”F style with my go-to golden jig brought about the same, a rather surprising result given the historical consistency of such rigs in this water. Switching to a D-shot & chamois worm pulled in better bass results and one ambitious kitty who’s take was a good running hit, yet apparently had the worm by the ass end as cats around fiddler size are inclined to do. Reminded me of near every experience bait fishing with Euro thread rigs, the hook often get’s ‘em in the cheek…
Few small and occasional dropshot fish later, the decision was made to fish a marabou mini-craw and chamois trailer for no other reason that if the fishing was gonna suck, at least I’ve have fun just fishing the craw. Although it is part of my flytying hobby I don’t speak much of these outside of spinning tackle forums as some consider the chamois version of “Uncle Josh” and chosen attachment method to be an abomination of sorts.
This switch was a game changer to say the least. No biggies, but the sheer numbers and successive cast catches of bass around this size was astounding relative the results prior…
Not surprising given the size of their maw, plenty of Greenies were all in on the idea…
Even some smaller mouthed species like pure strain Bluegills were committed enough to get the hook in their mouth despite ignoring more appropriate sized offerings.
Biggest and baddest scrappers of the day had whiskers and came in at considerabley larger sizes than the earlier dropshot kitty.
Now, about the ridiculous post title? Yes, I did indeed create these jigs a with a craw’s likeness in mind and always fished them as such. However, from the fishes POV I’ve become pretty darn certain the vast majority of time it’s being eaten is due to resemblance of these…
Cricket Frogs! Millions of these little guys around the lakes this time of year, so many that every step one takes sends half dozen leaping out of the way. The fish seemed absolutely locked-on to this subsurface frog foraging pattern and largely ignored everything else to an unbelievable extent. If it don’t have frog legs, it ain’t food, regardless of what usually passes muster.
Never pondered this before, but I’d wager it’s happened more than I’ve been aware of over the years. We always think frogs=topwater whereas craws=bottom, but from the fish perspective it’s not always such a hardline dichotomy. I think a great deal of my late summer/fall craw bites are in fact frog foragers as the look and behavior of a smaller frog underwater is not so different from the manner in which we fish most craws. The divedowns, twitchy shakes, and quick successive darts through vegetation and along the bottom are behaviors so very common to both forage types. What to do but reconsider the jig as a
Crog, the technique as
crogging, and let the individual fish decide which one it is.
Fly or spinning, any of you folks wonder about this stuff when catching fish on what we think are craw imitations? Plenty of double tail micro-jigs in the market, most of which are labeled or described as crickets, grasshoppers, or baby craws. Some small froggy stuff, but by and large it seems no one really addresses the possibility or potential of subsurface frog effectiveness irrespective of what we think we are imitating with these forked tail jigs.