Hollow body frogs

 so now the water is super high up into the grass and this means.......... Kermit time!!!!! oh yes high muddy water with just the tips of the grass now showing all around the lake. debris mats all over the place. it might be one of the only viable lures really, aside from a flipping and pitching pattern. the whole lake is gonna be crap for a week at least, and thats after the rain stops. as of right now its coming down even harder!! so the 14 inch in 3 days isn't the end yet. now hollow body frogs are perfect for this kind of fishing. highly weedless they don't hang on anything in the mats, you can walk them through the grass stalks and over the matts of debris.pause in the open spots or edge of mats and BAM!!! exciting fishing for sure, you just never know when some big ole hawg is eyeing it up from underneath.  there are a ton of frog/rat hollow body baits out there. personally i haven't really tried to many so i can't make an informed "this is the one" call as far as which bait is better than which bait. i do know this much of the few i have tried the better working ones with the better actions and better hooks tend to be the more expensive baits. i had a few generic types to start out when rojas started winning using them and they were the "must have" bait. the alabama rig is now the must have bait hahaha they do come and go. anyways the cheap baits tend to have hooks that have problems getting the fish, I'm not sure if  the gap isn't enough or the placement or maybe its the amount of give in the plastic but the strikes i got on some of them just never connected. i have even had a few that i set the hook and felt the fish good, then they just came right off like the hooks never took. another problem with the cheaper baits is they tend to take on water, fairly rapidly. after a dozen casts you have to squeeze them out or its like a sinking brick. i quickly got on board with spending a little more for a better product.  i use spro now because " helllllloooooo" rojas uses them!! and they are quality all around, gamakatsu hooks with a big gap, they don't take on water. cast great and have great action.the original spro bronze eye frog is great for working the kind of conditions I'm expecting when this rain stops. you can hop it along with pauses. you can skip it up onto the bank or under trees at the waterline. with some practice you can even walk the dog with it! some mods can be made by trimming the legs a bit. i have shortened mine by about an inch and a half or so. out of the box they are pretty long and i didn't want short strikes. i like the darker colors as i feel this adds the contrast needed for  this type of pattern, clear or muddy water id still choose the darker color. looking up from under water darker silhouettes always stand out better then lighter ones. the fish usually dictate the cadence of the jerks and pauses.  try several retrieves  and see what will produce. hopping, walking, jerking the bass will let you know what they want. skipping them isn't hard even with a bait caster, it just takes some practice and you can get them into really tight places. recently i got the popping version and again its a high quality product, love the color and it works great! the best thing about the popper is you can almost pop it in the same spot over and over. with a bit of practice you can keep it  poping along  without moving it more than a few inches.great for calling the bass in from distance and making those ones that are underneath mad enough to hit it. the gear i use to throw these lures is  a 6'0" medium heavy rod with a very fast tip. its made by shakespear( yes a 35$ rod) who says you need to break the bank and its actually a great rod. shakespear intrepid with titanium guides, its actually made for braid like the berkley lightning rods. i spool 20lb spider wire on it with a 6-8ft flourocarbon leader of about 8lbs. it has a quantum pt tour edition reel with a 6.3.1 gear ratio and a left hand retrieve. got the reel on sale didn't realize it was left handed at the time and the price was wayyyyyyy cheap because they were discontinuing this tour version. turned out to be a good thing, a left handed reel lets you cast and retrieve without switching hands. its great for buzz baits and topwater frogs, i use this rig for both. the top water bite will last anywhere from a week to maybe 2 weeks at best after the weather calms. the days just after the storm tend to be impossible blue bird  days and the fish are still very hunkered down. heavy flipping and pitching would be the call and in the densest of cover. but a week out and then the grass and mats become a feeding frenzy and lures that can get in deep where others can't will get the big ins for sure!