Each year, there’s a barrage of new bass baits that promise great catches by offering new designs and new actions. Here’s a look at a few key categories.

Swimming Frogs

Check the feature, “Using Frogs to Catch Toads” in this issue for details on fishing this new style of softbait. While hollow-body frogs like the Scum Frog are essentials, swimming frogs provide an effective alternative for shallow bass. Action comes from paired legs that create a surface disturbance on the retrieve.

The legs of Zoom’s Horny Toad fold back in a 180-degree angle so they sputter on the surface as the lure’s retrieved. The Sizmic Toad from Uncle Josh has a boot-tail on each leg to create surface disturbance. Lake Fork Tackle built the wide-body Fork Frog, with legs bowed to the side to enhance kicking action and flotation. Culprit’s Pro Frog is a trim design of pliable plastic, while the Zombie Toad from Voodoo Baits is an elongated shape, incorporating a hook groove on the belly to ease hook-sets, and has MegaStrike flavor cooked in. YUM’s Buzzfrog, infused with potent LPT (Live Prey Technology) flavor, is a bow-legged design with flattened boot-type feet and hook grooves top and bottom.

Mann’s Hard Nose Series incorporates a soft body for lifelike feel and action, with a head of tougher plastic to securely hold a hook and resist tearing. The Hard Nose Swim Toad is a sleek 5-incher with feet that fold backwards for action, and is infused with salt and the feeding stimulant S.P.I.C.E, acronym for Soft Plastic Infused Crustacean Extract.

Meanwhile, Berkley has crafted the Gulp! Batwing Frog of revolutionary Gulp! material, which is supple and natural-feeling as well as biodegradable. As a water-based material, Gulp! soaks up scents and flavors, releasing them 400 times more efficiently than plastisol softbaits, according to company tests. Stanley Jigs enlarged the boot-style feet to create extra commotion in their Ribbit and Bull Ribbit, a massive frog that churns the waters. The company also has designed special hooks for this frog genre.

You can’t go wrong with these lures. The combination of a natural-looking body and buzzing legs triggers awesome strikes from fish that resist other lures. Swimming frogs slide over grass clumps well and are deadly in open pockets between lily-pad clusters or reed patches. If a bass strikes and misses, drop the lure back and the fish eat it as it slowly sinks.

Beavers

Andre Moore, bass pro from Arizona and long-time lure tinkerer, started Reaction Innovations to create the baits he envisioned. One of the first was the Sweet Beaver, which wasn’t given that name until Moore used it to win an FLW tournament at Beaver Lake, Arkansas. The Sweet Beaver line now includes a 31⁄2-inch Smallie Beaver and 5-inch Double Wide Beaver, in addition to the standard 41⁄4-inch model.

These baits feature a ribbed body with an indentation down each side, which serves to keep the hookpoint from hanging in grass, while allowing easy hook-sets. The lateral flattening of the lure gives it a gliding action as it falls, in contrast to jigs and flippin’ tubes. The Sweet Beaver has a pair of lateral flappers, and a beaver-tail-shape appendage that’s serrated and can be split to increase action on the fall or when the lure is jigged.