limbs,” Rojas recalls. “I remember the lure was just kind of
meandering around; it didn’t walk or anything. He missed a
giant blow-up right away, but then he caught one.
“Immediately, a light bulb went off in my head. I remembered
all those lakes and rivers I had visited [on tour] and thought of
hundreds of places where the technique would work.”
Therein lies the Rojas epiphany. While nearly every angler at
the time equated a hollow frog with fishing scum and lily pads,
Rojas saw it as a deadly weapon for shoreline cover of any type.
He quickly acquired what frog lures were available at the
time and began expanding on the technique with a new
Japanese model called the Sumo Frog. Results were immediate.
“It was totally different,” Rojas says. “I could go behind anybody,
anywhere, and catch fish on it.”
Rojas’ first competitive breakthrough came with a top-10
finish on the Alabama River. More importantly, it was the first
time Rojas’ frog technique was captured on camera.
“The commentators were like, ‘Oh, my gosh. Look what he’s
doing.’”
Soon thereafter, Rojas found himself leading the
Bassmaster Classic using a frog. Attention for the technique
was unparalleled, but the lure wasn’t perfect.
Creating the Bronzeye Frog
Rojas recognized the time was right for development of
something new.
“The industry wanted something like that,” he says. “It was
topwater, so it was fun, and it was one of the only things [lure
categories] left that hadn’t been refined or developed.”
By this time, Rojas had been contacted by several lure companies
for an endorsement, but his passion lay in making
something better.
“I wanted to challenge the notion that frogs had a poor
hook-up ratio,” he explains. “Gamakatsu had a premier double
hook, so I designed the bait around that hook.”
There was a lot more to building a perfect frog lure than just
sculpting a look-alike around a big hook, as Rojas found out.
The material had to be a blend that was both rugged and collapsible.
Weighting needed to be considered, and a keel was
necessary to encourage proper action.
“I knew it had to walk side-to-side in a very small spot,
almost never moving forward. I was building a lure for target
fishing and skipping,” he says.
Fifteen months later, the SPRO Dean Rojas Bronzeye Frog
was introduced and won Best Soft Bait at the 2005 ICAST show.
Fine-Tuning the Frog
Though the SPRO frog was a hit, Rojas was still experimenting
with frog fishing as a tournament strategy. As he fished the
lure in competition coast to coast, the Arizona pro experienced
the pros and cons of his addiction.
“I couldn’t win on it,” he admits. “It’s very difficult to catch
fish for four days on a frog. I’d just run out of water.”
Despite the highs and lows of his early days with the new
creation, Rojas says he wouldn’t change a thing. He was, after
all, still learning the scope of the frog’s capabilities
“I had to go to the far end of it to see the limitations of the
bait.”
Today, Rojas is more calculated in terms of his lure choices.
While a frog lure still accounts for a large percentage of his
casts, Rojas now looks for bite windows. It’s “more of a tool in
the arsenal” than his only weapon. Working it into his game
plan – instead of making it his only game plan – has paid off
with major wins, including the 2008 Bassmaster Elite Series
event on Oneida Lake and the 2019 Major League Fishing Bass
Pro Tour Phoenix Boats Stage Five presented by Mercury on
Smith Lake.
Putting the Tool to Work
Rojas confirms the best times to frog fish are late in the day
during a spring warming trend and early in the morning
throughout the summer.
“The best time,” he claims, “is when it’s windy with a dropping
barometer.”
More than simply recognizing the right scenario is the ability
to put the frog in places few others can, in perfect ambush
zones.
“I’m always looking for the hardest place to get it in there,” he
says. “It’s almost like a game to me. You need to get it up against
a hard edge, like a shoreline or seawall – a place where a bass
has the frog pinned – and that creates their instinct to hit it.”
Finally, Rojas will often use the frog as a search lure to
reveal the whereabouts of fish that might miss the bait under
less-than-ideal conditions but crush it when the time is right.
This is common during the spawn.
In the end, Rojas has gone farther with a single fishing lure
than most anglers would ever dream. Sure, the frog burned
him a time or two, but it’s also helped to forge his rock-star
career at the same time. He regrets none of it and stays enthusiastic
about the longevity of the technique that he forged more
than two decades ago.
“I KNEW IT HAD TO WALK
SIDE-TO-SIDE IN A VERY
SMALL SPOT, ALMOST NEVER
MOVING FORWARD. I WAS
BUILDING A LURE FOR TARGET
FISHING AND SKIPPING.”
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2020 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING.COM | FLWFISHING.COM 23