Snag-Free Toads: Right Choice In Shallow Water
Story and Photos By Mark Hicks

If you're not fishing toad lures, you're missing out on the most productive bass baits to come along in years. Toads have solid, soft-plastic bodies and swimming-tail or boot-tail legs that sputter like a buzzer when the bait is retrieved on the surface. The toad's lifelike appearance and lively action are more than bass can resist, including the heavyweights.

Toads are as snag-free as floating, hollow-bodied baits like the Scum Frog, but they sink at rest. This lets you fish them on or under the surface. They excel in the summertime when bass lurk beneath lily pads and matted aquatic vegetation. However, they pull bass from laydowns, flooded bushes, rocks, docks and any other bass cover, provided the cover is shallow. Most toad bass are taken in water less than 3 feet deep.

Toads also fare better than you might think in chilly water. I learned this firsthand last March while fishing Alabama's Lake Guntersville with Jeff Littleton of Sizmic Lures and Matt Bichanich from Uncle Josh. The water and air temperatures were in the low 50s, and we were fishing submerged hydrilla in the back of a large cove. We could easily see the hydrilla inches beneath the surface because the water was gin clear and only 2 to 3 feet deep.

The first wave of prespawn bass was beginning to move into the shallows. I would have opted for a slow, nuanced presentation in the cold water, but Littleton and Bichanich started right out slinging Sizmic Toads. Though the conditions were far from ideal for toad baits, they caught nearly 20 bass that day that weighed from 2 to more than 5 pounds. Every bass belted a Sizmic Toad.

Littleton introduced the original Sizmic Toad four years ago. Once the toad craze caught fire, many other lure makers came up with similar lures. Some have boot-tail legs like the Sizmic Toad, while others have swimming-tail legs like Zoom's Horny Toad.

Due to the success of the original 41/4-inch Sizmic Toad, Littleton has come up with several other models, including the 31/4-inch Sizmic Toad Jr., 51/2-inch Propwash Toad, 81/4-inch Magnum Toad for muskie fishing and the 41/4-inch Pop'N Toad, which has a cupped face for chugging retrieves.

Though Littleton makes Sizmic Toads in a myriad of colors, he opts for green pumpkin with a chartreuse belly 90 percent of the time. He also likes the Melon Frog and white colors.

Most anglers swim toads over the surface like a buzzbait, and this has proven to be a deadly tactic. A toad is more realistic than a buzzbait, and it slides over scummy, matted grass that would clog a buzzbait's blade. I've used this method successfully while fishing grass on a number of bass waters, including the Potomac and Mississippi rivers.

I discovered that you must experiment with retrieve speeds when fishing a toad, just as with any other lure. For example, I remember one day on the Potomac in September when the bass wanted a Yum BuzzFrog zipping over the grass. The strikes were explosive, and I was amazed at how easily the bass grabbed the speeding toad.

On the other hand, I had to crawl the BuzzFrog over the surface while fishing the Mississippi River in July. I held my rod tip high and retrieved the BuzzFrog as slowly as I could and still keep it kicking on top. Many strikes came in open water when I pulled the bait off a thick patch of eel grass.

Subsurface Retrieve
Though a topwater toad is deadly, you also need to use subsurface retrieves to take full advantage of these lures. When I fished with Littleton and Bichanich at Lake Guntersville, they conned the bass by twitching their toads along a few inches under the surface. Littleton uses this ploy almost exclusively when he fishes his Sizmic Toad.

"I started playing with subsurface retrieves because bass would sometimes take a swipe at my toad and never touch it when I buzzed it on top," Littleton says. "I get more bites by twitching the toad under the water, and I don't miss many of them."

Littleton varies the depth of the retrieve from an inch to roughly 12 inches beneath the surface, depending on the water clarity. He always keeps the toad high enough that he can see it throughout the retrieve.

He first got onto this tactic a few years ago while fishing shallow, emergent, shoreline grass at Alabama's Logan Martin Lake. Post-spawn bass were lurking near the grass, but they weren't aggressive enough to respond to a topwater retrieve. For a two-week period, Littleton and his father caught loads of 3- to 5-pound largemouth bass by twitching toads under the surface along the edges of the grass. Most other fishermen were struggling to get bites during that time.

Dog Walking
Littleton rigs his toads weedless with a 4/0 Mustad Impact Soft Plastic bait hook. The hook has a gripper attached to the line eye. You push the gripper into the nose of the toad and then run the hook's point up through the belly of the bait so the point lies protected in a slot on the toad's back. To give the toad a better action, Littleton rigs it so the belly bows down toward the hook's shank.

"That makes the toad walk back and forth under the water like the Zara Spook does on the surface," Littleton says. "That really does a number on bass."

Another popular hook for toad fishing has a screw-in keeper attached to the line eye. Owner and Daiichi are two companies that make this style of hook. It holds the toad securely so it doesn't slide down the shank. The 4/0 and 5/0 sizes are the most popular for toad fishing.

Jingle Bells
When Littleton fishes a toad on top of thickly matted grass, he threads a tiny jingle bell onto the hook's shank. He claims the bell is silent under the surface but makes a racket when you drag a toad over matted grass.

"With that bell, you can slow the toad way down and still make a lot of noise," Littleton says. "That helps bass find the bait through the thick grass."

Whether you fish a toad on or under the surface, match it with a stiff rod and a minimum of 50-pound braided line. I do well with a 7-foot Team All Star rod (model TAS846C), which is rated for 12- to 25-pound test. I match it with a left-hand Pflueger Supreme reel.

I'm right-handed, but a left-hand reel lets me get control of my toad the instant it hits the water. I can also set the hook harder with my right hand. That's important, because you need to hit the bass as hard as you can to bury the barb. A no-stretch braided line is a big help here.

Hesitating
The hardest part of toad fishing is hesitating for a few seconds when you get a strike. Those explosive attacks urge you to immediately set the hook in self-defense. If you do, you'll miss most of the bass that nab your toad.

"You have got to let them take a toad for two seconds before you set the hook," Bichanich says. "It's not as critical when you're fishing a toad under the surface, but you have to wait when you're buzzing it."

However, even when you do everything right, you won't stick every bass that strikes a toad. Bichanich estimates that he hooks about 70 percent of the bass that strike when he buzzes a toad, and 90 to 95 percent of the bass when he twitches a toad beneath the surface.

When Bichanich targets matted grass in the summertime, he keys on points, holes and the edges of the vegetation. He buzzes the toad over the matted portions of the grass and twitches the bait beneath the surface through the holes and along the edges.

"A lot of times the bass won't come up through the mat to get a bait," Bichanich says. "That's when fishing the toad just under the surface really pays off."