Fishing a Spro frog in thick weed cover for bass and pike

After a morning of unsuccessful carping in the rain, the wind blew the clouds away and sunny skies are back for a couple days. We decided to give up on carp fishing and headed back to the Raisin River by boat. The goal was to try a bait my buddy is all excited about, namely the Spro frog.

The Spro frog looks like a cross between a mouse and a frog, and is a topwater lure that is virtually weedless. The general idea, is to find a thick carpet like mat of weeds / fuzz, cast the Spro frog on top, and drag it along the surface, pausing and twitching every once in a while, especially near open water pockets. Big bass and pike hiding in the thick weed cover are supposed to splash through the heavy weeds to hit or cruch the lure.

I find the idea pretty interesting, my buddy actualy saw it happen last week, when a friend of ours actually hooked a decent pike on a Spro frog, but ended up losing it do to not having a leader. I had to see this action for myself, do I gave it a try. Here are some reflections after trying for a couple hours.

1) The bait is extremely castable and very weedless, even when used with a steel leader. It retrieves well and has good action on the mat of weeds as well as open water.

2) When the bait is retrieved, it leaves a trail on the weed mat, so you know exactly where you've already casted to and retrieved.

3) I didn't manage to raise any large fish, although I had some smaller hits. I can't imagine even a big bass coming through the weeds and being able to accurately gulp the lure in at the same time. This is an issue my buddy has run into in the oast, the bass seem to splash around or hit the lure instead of inhaling it the way they do in open water.

4) I didn't catch anything on my first attemot, but my buddy managed a small pike in open water just along the edge of the weeds. The hookset wasn't the best I've seen, but we still managed to land the fish. I'm still VERY skeptical about the hookset capabality of this frog in the thick weeds, especially for bass.

Overall reflections:

The lure is very interesting to cast, as it gives you a feeling of being able to fish where it is normally impossible to fish. It glides of weeds mat, lily pads and other vegetation more easily than anything else I have tried to date. Casting is acurate, and you get good distance too.

Although I didn't catch anything, it is exciting to see anything hit the lure through the thick vegetation, as it is with many other topwater lures.

My big question is whether or not it will actually hook and catch fish in thick cover instead of simply raising them. I hope to try again next week. Though the weeds are dying down and thining out, and the bigger bass might be "on the move", I'm hoping to actually get a good hookset on the Spro frog.