It’s time for topwater bass fishing. Frogging season is upon us and I’ve personally been really enjoying getting to throw one again for the first time in several months. Today, we’re going to be taking a closer look at one of the frogs I’ve been testing out for the last month or so—the Savage Gear Hop Walker Frog.
Action
This is a really easy frog to walk. I actually reviewed the popping version of this frog last summer as well, the Savage Gear Pop Walker Frog, and I remember it being really easy to walk as well. So I wasn’t all that surprised to see this bait walk well, but I was still impressed nonetheless.
With the simple twitch of the rod you can find your way into a cadence pretty quickly and walk this frog left to right with ease, able to nearly stall it completely out and walk it in one spot if you get close to a piece of cover or have a fish miss the bait on the initial blowup. This frog also skips well so you can get it back into those tight places where the bass might not have seen a bait in a while.
Good hook
This frog comes with a super-strong double frog hook built into the hollow body of the bait. Over the years, I have always bent my hook points up just a little on older frogs to create a better hookup ratio. But it seems there’s a trend now in some of the newer frogs I’ve been testing out that they come this way from the factory.
The same is the case for the Hop Walker Frog. The hook points are already turned up at a good angle to create the best hookup ratio possible. Turning the hooks up a little like this helps them rise above the plastic of the frog as it’s compressed to penetrate the fish. I don’t recall losing a single fish so far on this bait, though I did miss a few that never really got the bait but just blew up on it off a bed.
Colors
There’s a pretty wide array of color choices in the Hop Walker Frog. My favorite is the Gill color that I personally tested out. It has a great color scheme to mimic a bluegill and even has little flakes of glitter built into the plastic to catch rays of light and create a super realistic representation of what the scales on a bait fish look like in the water. The Gill pattern in particular, and many hollow body frog colors for that matter, aren’t really intended to mimic frogs but small baitfish.
You see this too with the Shad pattern and solid White colors. But there are also some good frog colors like the Green Leopard and the Tan, as well as the gold standard straight black and even a couple colors that could resemble a duckling or other small bird in the Black and Yellow and Olive Chartreuse. A great variety for only 8 color choices, Savage Gear gives you something effective to imitate lots of different forage types.
Weighted belly and sizes
Like most hollow-body frogs, the Hop Walker Frog has a weight in the belly of the bait to improve casting and ensure the bait rolls over and sits upright in the water. They offer two sizes: a 1/2-ounce version that’s 2 1/4 inches long as well as 3/4-ounce that comes in at 2 3/4 inches long.
These two size offerings give you a pretty good range to match whatever hatch you’re fishing around. The 2 3/4 inch is more my style and what I’d call a normal full-size frog. I can throw it a long ways and do so with pretty good accuracy and again, it skips well. But the smaller version would work great too for finicky bass or pond and creek fishing. Or, if the fish were blowing up on the bigger one for some reason and not getting it, that would be a good time to try the smaller one.
In conclusion
I am impressed with this frog overall. It has a good hookup ratio right out of the box and walks really well. Those are two of the main characteristics I look for in a frog; action and efficiency in getting fish into the boat. It also casts and skips really well, too.
I also like the color schemes a lot. With a few super natural colors like their Gill pattern, they paid attention to the detail all the way down to the multi-color strands of premium rubber used for the legs. With a color selection to match almost anything that would be scampering along the surface, there’s lots to choose from here. And with the two size selections, you have 16 choices really to dial in the perfect frog for the day.
At $8.49, I’d call this a very above-average frog at an average price. It’s not the cheapest frog you’ll find on the market if you’re just looking for something to throw. But if you’re looking for an awesome frog at a reasonable price, I think that’s what you’ll find with the Savage Gear Hop Walker Frog.
The Savage Gear Hop Walker Frog is available at TackleWarehouse.com.
