Proper Maintenance On External Frog Weights
Properly maintaining the external, body-mounted weights on topwater frogs is essential.
Generally, there are three different methods used for adding weights to frogs. Some manufactures pour lead directly onto the hooks. Others wrap the hook shank inside of the body with wire or lead tape. Thirdly, some frogs have body-mounted weights.
There are pros and cons to each method.
- Internal wire wraps/tape tends to be fairly maintenance free and while it may not be susceptible to falling off, it will rust over time and requires being rewrapped. This method also tends to result in a smaller hook gap.
- Hook mounted weights can work their way loose and are much more difficult for the average user to replace, but you dont have to worry about losing hook gap space and they tend to require less maintenance than body mounted weight.
- Body mounted weights cause no loss of hook gap and are easy to replace. The downside is they will eventually fall off for some users. This, of course, depends on where you are fishing, your accuracy casting, debris in the water, among other things.
Frogs such as our Hambone (and a slew of other brands), use an external, body-mounted weight. If you look at the underside of Hambone, you'll see the weight down where the hooks exit the body. Many manufacturers use this type of weight and they all have the potential to fall off without proper inspection and maintenance. Think of this maintenance being similar to retying your line after so many catches to prevent losing a monster due to frayed line or sharpening a hook after setting the hook into a log or even after catching a bunch of fish. While the weights are typically glued to the body, the glue can and will work its way loose, potentially allowing the weight to fall off. This tends to be most common when yanking the lure free from a snag or a jolting backlash that brings the lure to a dead stop mid flight. To prevent this from happening, the weight should be inspected for loosening. If the weight looks loose, or if you can see the weight beginning to separate from the frog body, super glue should be used to seal around the weight. We like using Starbond brand Multi-Purpose MEDIUM viscosity super glue. We get ours from Amazon, but you can find it in a variety of stores. For fast curing, Starbond offers an accelerant spray which immediately cures the glue, allowing for faster downtime.
