frogs ????

[troutmaster]

3 years ago up in loch tulla i was fishing for brown trout when the brown trout season had opened with a few friends.we were staying up there for a few nights, after a hevy night of drinking we headed down to the loch to fly fish for brown trout, mid afternoon one of my friends 'fairly old school in his approach to fishing' brought out the old piking rod. and while was waiding had frogs to use as bait. we all brought the fly rods in and sat on the bank to watch my senior of friends go to work with these frogs. once they were riged up and frogs as bait within 5 minutes a pike of 7lb, then ten minutes to follow one of 12lb. in amazment i wanted to have a bash, i was told to fish the frog like a slow spinner keep it slowly moving. for the two days fishing i changed species and ended up fishing for the pike. a realy good couple of days fishing with the best pike up at 14lb. ive tried the frogs a few times for the pike since and no such luck.

[PikeHunter]

never heard of that before mate!

can i ask where he got the frogs?

[troutmaster]

Originally Posted by PikeHunter

never heard of that before mate!

can i ask where he got the frogs?

when waiding because of the time of year there was frogs everywhere the reason why the fishing was so good with them. it was late march and ive since tried this at different places but no luck, ive heard of this being done for trout in hill lochs tho in sutherland where i fish.

[valleyboy]

hi mate was flyfishing my local my resevoir couple of weeks back the margins were rammed with tadpoles the trout were coming in and taking them put a small black lure on and had my limit of 4 and released 3 mike

[dave fish]

this i have seen when fishing my local canal one night,heard a splash and saw a frog swimming in the water no sooner had it got wet it got eaten ,i tried this with a toy frog set up like a lure but it just looked like a floating turd and not very usefull so off i went to the tackle shop and bought a jelly one whick is very life like and to my astonishment it worked ,not sure about using live ones though seems a bit tight to me.

[Greenheart]

I'm all for livebaiting for Pike, but Frogs are going through a bit of a hard time at the moment. There's a mystery virus sweeping through the country & killing them in their millions. Seems a shame to use them as bait. Please don't move them between waters as this could help spread the disease. The same applies to live fish.

[fishypaul]

in my pike fishing career i have seen pike take ducklings and moorhen chicks,
in fred bullers excellent book on pike he describes in great detail about using a rat plug after finding the tail of a rat sticking out of the throat of a large pike,
it just goes to show that the pikes diet is not limited to fish alone,if a meal presents itself the pike will take it.

makes you think about other ways you might be able to catch them doesn't it ?

[blackwater]

It was only last night that i was out for a couple of hours at the side of a Lough when i noticed a young moorhen getting mauled by a pike, was great to see but not so nice that the moorehen was killed.

On the Frog front i wouldnt be for the use of live frogs for bait, it is as Greenheart says they are going through a tough time, and it might have only have been a very localised thing that the pike were readily feeding on them, i know other pike still take them but only as maybe a secondary source of food.

BW

[luremaker]

frogs are a great bait,wild frogs are hard to come by as so many dont make it to adulthood,so i collect som spawn and rear my own! 99% survival rate ,they eat all manner of stuff too esp the live crickets from the pet shop!

[TURBOTAKER]

Ive seen trout take baby frogs. Be carefull using live frogs as you might get into hot water with the rspca.