Bass Fishing Aug - Sept 2020 | Page 25

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