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hard pvc frog


mark poulson
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Our club tournament yesterday got canceled due to 45 mph winds, so I came home and made this Azek PVC trim board frog.

The bait is 2 1/4" long, 1 3/8" wide, and 1" tall. It weighs 14.2 grams without the paint, and 10.5 grams without the hook and skirt. It has no rattles, because I wanted it as light as possible. As it is, with the two magnets in the tail, it sits tail down like a popper, but it will stay up and walk on a slow retrieve.

I used a Booyah frog as a model for size and overall shape.

I used 3/16"X 5 1/16" diameter permanent magnets at the tail to hold the hook tines in place.

I used a frog hook that I had lying around. I bent the hook tines up so they lay flush with the face of the magnets at rest, and are open for the hook set when deployed. I'm pretty sure it is an Owner 4/0 hook, and it was a bear to bend!

I don't remember when or where I bought either the magnets or the hook. CRS!!!

I test cast it a dozen times at the local pond. It sits tail down, and walks on a slow retrieve. A fast walk will pull it under. It stays on top with a straight fast chug, chug retrieve. The angled throat gives it lift on a straight pull.

Of the dozen casts I made with it on 50lb braid, the hooks stayed in place on all of them. On one of the casts, the skirt got up into the hooks a little, so, either the hooks came up and then back when it first landed, or the tines caught the skirt on one cast.

Either way, that part is a success. The hook, which is seated in a belly slot and held in place with a brazier head screw, and held in alignment with a U shaped sst wire, pivots up with very little pressure, and has what looks like enough clearance to stick a fish (3/8"+-), but I won't know for sure until I've taken it to a grass lake.

I drilled a cross ways air pocket toward the rear (the bondo'd hole) to try and compensate for the weight of the paint and top coat to come.

There is a cross ways hole at the tail that I pull the skirt through.

It was fun to make, and I can't wait to paint it! Probably I'll use a sparkle white belly, red throat, yellow sides overshot with green pumpkin on the shoulders and back, with black spots and ear hole.

Anyway, it wasn't hard to make, and I'm probably going to get a sst compression spring and try one with that instead of magnets. That will make the frog lighter, for sure, and let me put rattles in the tail without sinking the bait.


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