Frog Gigging

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We would wade out in the farm ponds around our community and gig frogs all night when I was a kid. That is something that my son will probably never do because like it has already been said, not very many frogs around anymore and people arent as friendly as they once were. Too many no trespassing signs around here.



yoterbob, you pretty much summed it up. It was fun but it's pretty much over. It's ashamed as it was a learning experience that kids will never get to have...John
 
Daybreak,
I grew up in south central Louisiana and we grabbed (yes, by hand, used mechanical grabs, shot them with a .22, and used the cane pole). We used a small black knat bream fly tied to 6 or 8# test line. You only need about three feet of line on the end of the 10-14' pole. With these new collapsing fiberglass poles, that would be real fun. They grab the fly, the small hook is in their mouth, and the fun is on. I have had bobcats walk up to within 10' of the headlight, curious about what was going on. You have to be real careful in Louisiana with the snakes, both poisionous and non. They will both scare the s*** out of you if you don't see them and they fall in the boat (thinking it is water) and don't try to shoot them in the boat. My uncle from Texas had a friend do that to my jon boat. I am glad no one got shot. A good way to keep the frogs is to use an ice chest with loose bag ice (about 1/4 full of ice), keep your cold drinks cold also. When the frogs hit the ice, they will jump for a few times, then the cold kicks in and they become sluggish like they are going into hibernation. Frogs are cold blooded and get real slugish when they are exposed to cold. I prefer to skin the whole frog, gutting and removing the head, cutting the tendions in the front legs & back, soaking in either salt water or Italian dressing depending upon the way you are going to cook them. They are great fried, baked, in a stew, parboiled-deboned-added to pasta with some parmason cheese, or grilled on a pit with onions & bell pepers.

Good luck, be careful, and always go out in pairs...just in case.
 
Boy the things you do when you're young and foolish. I was driving north one evening on a fishing trip in the Kawartha lakes area of Ontario. We got a late Spring rain storm. It was coming down in buckets. The drainage ditches quickly filled, and there were thousands of frogs all over the highway. You could feel them under the tires, squish, squish. Yuck! When the rain slacked off, I rushed from the car and caught a bucket full of them, thinking the bass will love these guys. When I got to my fishing site the first thing I did was harness up a few and cast them out. Mind you I knew nothing of frogs at the time, still don't I guess. All evening I could see these beady little eyes staring back at me. Finally I realized it was the frogs so I put some weight on the lines to sink them. Little did I know I was also drowning them. At last I gave up, but those beady little eyes have haunted me for years. Now, as a previous posted stated, they've all but disappeared from the chemicals I guess. I miss seeing them hopping around in my garden. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal
 
Myself and a couple friends went gigging up a small tributary of the Ohio river once. My buddy had a place along the Ohio. It was pitch black dark, no moon,plenty of cloud cover.After going as far from the farm as we were going to go. My buddy drops the spotlight,the only light, in the boat and breaks it.It tooks us darn near all night to find our way back. I think we found every downed tree in the river that night,plus some very nice overhanging limbs with our heads! It's funny now,but I would've gave $50 for a $2 dollar flashlight at the time.
 
I went to a friends farm he had just bought. He said check out my pond down back it is full of the biggest frogs you've ever seen. He was right too, it was like frog heaven. But it was really clogged up with water weeds and hard to move the canoe in. It took at least five minutes of pulling myself out of the mud just to get into the canoe and out into the water to gig some frogs. So there I am in the back of the canoe with my brand new $100 Streamlight Flashlight and he leans to far and turns the canoe over before we get one frog. It's pitch black out but from deep below there is this eerie green glow. My Streamlight is on and stuck in the bottom of the pond. It must have taken my fifteen attempts to swim down to it through God knows what. I had crawly things up my nose and in my ears, and the leeches were miserable. But I got my light back. I never did go back to that pond again. That's been almost twenty years ago. I wonder what ever happened to that flash light? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif
 
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