Fishhound Magazine 009 | Page 13

Marty Stone The amiable North Carolinian bass pro Marty Stone employs two retrieves at the edge of cover and in open water. “One is a speed retrieve — four or five hard pops, followed by a pause, then repeat the sequence,” explains Stone. “The other is a ‘pop-pause’ — pop then let it sit…pop, let it sit. One of those two will do it. If not, it’s not a frog day!” He uses the “pop-pause” retrieve at the edge of prime cover, varying both the length of the pop and the duration of the pause. “It’s like the frog coming out of cover and just looking,” he says. Stone declares that 90 percent of his strikes come while the bait is sitting. In open water, his retrieve is faster accompanied by a shorter pause. Open water frogging employs the frog as a search bait. It is designed to call fish from a longer distance. The “dean of frogging,” Bassmaster Elite pro Dean Rojas, designed the Spro Bronzeye Frog, one of the most popular hollow-bodied frogs on the market today. Rojas prefers to “walk” his frog whenever conditions allow. Two seasons ago, he designed the Spro Bronzeye Shad, a hollow-body frog-style bait with a single s