Our Outdoors: Feeling Froggy
By Nick Simonson
The midsummer migration has begun. With more and more regularity, I’m seeing young-of-the-year salamanders, toads and frogs making their movements between their rearing grounds, which are usually small oxbows along the waters I fish, or seasonal pools such as the retention and stock ponds around our neighborhood. In the morning under the lengthening light of the streetlamps ahead of dawn, these soft-skinned creatures look to wrap their nocturnal forays into the great big world around their birthwaters with a shady place to hide and avoid the summer heat.
For many, this journey ends in a relocation nearer to larger waters such as lakes and rivers and the cool, dense grasses along their edges. Thus, it’s not surprising to find frogs at the water’s edge in great abundance at this time of year. For anglers, this sudden appearance of a new forage base can change the game for all species and adds an edge to explore in the fishing equation. As this year’s crop of newly-mobilized froglets and their relative inexperience with the dangers lurking in bigger waters provide an easy meal for bass, walleyes, pike and catfish, it’s important to consider targeting those areas for better success.
A late July outing in my journal stands out from many years ago for just that reason. I had returned home from taking the bar exam to get my law license and sweat out the six-week waiting period to see whether or not I had passed. Turning to my favorite stress reliever, my buddy and I paddled upstream the following morning to explore some favorite spring fishing haunts and see how the heat of summer had changed them. My buddy dropped me off on the far bank of the river and positioned the canoe upstream from me. As I stepped through the dense cover and found my footing on the grassy ledge over the water, a dozen young frogs sprang forth from the cover, with a number of them hitting the water and scooting back to the edge of the bank. All except one, that is.
A large boil spun up to the surface and I took note that it was unlikely that little frog made it back, consumed by the whatever-it-was lurking in the break off the ledge. I pitched my jig and twister parallel to the shore and worked it back over the spot where the swirl came from. While my offering didn’t look like the brown and green northern leopard frogs taking the risky plunge, it didn’t matter much as a sudden strike had me setting the hook on a sixteen-inch walleye that quickly came to hand and into the five-gallon bucket beside me. It would be the first instance that I’d experience hungry summertime walleyes keying in on such an odd place, and what seemed like a nontraditional food source – but it wouldn’t be the last.
For the rest of that morning and in seasons to come, we’d find many fish in that river along similar stretches and in other waters as well, keying in along those spaces where enough water depth along the bank provided a spot to position, and summer’s natural pattern provided the unwary forage. In addition to walleyes and smallmouth bass, northern pike, and catfish key in on these places and any fish big enough to inhale these amphibians likely will as well.
Now, as the heat and humidity build once again and summer comes roaring back to the region, consider these early morning sightings and those you make in the grassy stretches along your favorite water. Wherever frogs, toads and salamanders make contact with their first big water experience, you’ll likely find your favorite game fish waiting for their appearance as well. Along with the sweat of summer and the tinny buzz of mosquitoes, it’s quite possible you’ll also get that froggy feeling this time of year and turn it into some exciting angling…in our outdoors.
