Wait until the clock strikes 12 on June 1, and you’ll have the time of your life in the Atchafalaya Basin.
“Tonight should be fun,” says the frog. “You bet,” I say. “Ronnie Brown’s back in from offshore, and we’re planning to be out at midnight.”
“Who?”
“Ronnie Brown — the frog hunter. You know, the guy who shined his sealed-beam on you back in March.”
“Oh, him,” says the frog. “Well, you don’t see too many frog hunters where I hang out in the basin.”
“Well, that was before all this high water changed a few things. With the GPSs, Gator Tails, Pro Drives and ultra-light airboats with ROTAX engines, I have a feeling you’re about to see a few more.”
“There goes the neighborhood,” the frog smugly replies. “With the noisy racket you guys are going to make playing in the mud splashing around chasing croakers, I ain’t going to be able to hear my cousin holler from across the river in American Lake. We were planning a little ‘ro-um-ro-um’ sing along tonight. Kermit’s got such a great baritone bellow. The ladies especially love it in April and May.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but we were planning a little fun of our own. You better wear your sunglasses; most good singers do,” I tell him. “You know how it is when the spotlight’s on you.”
Stephensville resident Ronnie Brown has been hunting the June 1 opening night for the last 10 years.
“You’d be surprised how many people go out there at midnight on opening night,” he said. “We’ve gone over to Grassy Lake for years on opening night.
“When you get out there, it looks like a Christmas tree with all the lights going. They go out there in their putt-putt boats and skiffs, and they go in their mud boats and turn up the grass, and I go behind them with my little airboat and catch ’em.”
Because of the vast number of backwater ponds, sloughs, chutes and lakes found in the basin, particularly behind the levee in St. Mary Parish, frogs are abundant most years. What’s more, they’re abundant enough for frog hunters to make several good catches.
Yet, because of that vastness, it also pays to spend time scouting where you’re planning a hunt before you go, for two reasons. One is to make sure there are frogs in the area you plan to hunt, and two is so you don’t get lost.
Most frog hunters go out with at least two people to the boat. One person may be doing the driving and looking for frogs, while the other is doing the catching and sacking the amphibians.
I have to admit — I’ve been in ponds, so intent on catching frogs that I didn’t pay attention to where I was going. I’d spot a frog, run to it and catch it. After picking up a dozen or so, ready to move on to another location, that eerie feeling of “where the heck am I?” would come over me. It’s never a good feeling.
Brown points out he likes to becom familiar with an area prior to hunting it.
“I go out before dark,” he said. “I run it, check out the spots where I want to go and then I know where I’m going. I got a GPS, and put everything on it.
“Another thing is, you go in a pond and you think you got the whole pond down. I’ll widen out and say, ‘They got a big hole over here,’ and we’ll go back through and pick up another 25 frogs.”
What most frog hunters don’t do is scout an area for frogs like they would any other animal they pursue. Successful deer hunters look for sign along travel routes leading to bedding and feeding areas. There are things to look and listen for concerning frogs as well.
The low “ro-um-ro-um-ro-um” drone of a bullfrog and the robust “unk-unk” blast of a pig frog will let you know they’re in the area.
Frogs will also holler or call in the daylight hours, particularly during the spawn. The April and May closed season, while the spawn is taking place, is a good time to be out fishing and listening for potential areas to hunt frogs.
The quality of the vegetation and hazards are other things to check out.
“I go out in the afternoon and when I go out, I see frogs,” Brown said. “When you go out and get in the lilies and grass with your airboat, mud boat or whatever, you look and you’ll see frogs jump. Late in the afternoon, I’ll go kinda survey my spots before I go. I don’t want to hit a stump or piece of pipe sticking out of the grass or something.”
Most frog hunters will agree that a frog will eat just about anything that’s not bigger than him. But they also agree that there is a direct relationship between crawfish and frogs numbers.
“Where you find crawfish, you’re going to find frogs,” Brown said. “That’s what you’ll mostly find in them. If you find crawfish in the ponds, when the water goes down, it’s going to be good. Every frog you get, if you cut him open, he’s going to have crawfish in him. But I’ve found birds inside of frogs. One time I said, ‘Looky here,’ after I cut him open. ‘A bird,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe that.’ And I’ve also seen snakes in them.”
Bayou Vista local Mike Breaux is another Atchafalaya Basin frog hunter who feels drought and low water conditions prior to this year affected the crawfish population and impacted frog numbers there.
“We’ve just been having so much drought in the Basin the last few years, some of the ponds we used to frog along the edges of the river have actually grown up with willow trees,” he said. “We haven’t had any crawfish, and if you don’t have crawfish, you’re not going to have frogs.
“Now you see, right now, I think everything is going to straighten out with this high water in the river the way it is. I think the frog population is going to pick up all around, especially if we get one or two more good years of water like we got.”
There certainly is nothing better than knowing an area and having the comfort of coordinates plugged into a GPS that can help you in the event you get turned around. However, Breaux’s willingness to share the areas he hunts is mainly because the secret is out on these formerly secluded areas.
“There’s no such thing as a secret spot any more,” Breaux said. “When I was young in my 20s, we had all kinds of places we kept secret. I had secret hunting spots, secret fishing spots and secret frogging spots, but there’s no such thing any more.”
Breaux suggested a number of areas worth checking out in the Basin.
“I went the Friday before the season ended in March, and I went up on Cypress Island,” he said. “There are some ponds to the west end of the island. From American Pass to Blue Point Chute, you can frog on both sides of the river except when you get to Attakapas Wildlife Management Area.
“And Wax Lake is good for the outboard fellows. When the water falls in the Wax, those guys catch better with the skiffs along the mudflats than those guys in the ponds with the airboats.”
Most people utilize their hands to catch frogs when out hunting, but another tool of the trade is a net fastened to a long pole. An old marine radio antenna makes for a great lightweight pole to help reach back on the bank or mudflat.
I use a grabber when picking up frogs in the grass along lake, bayou and pond edges. When frogs are sitting on top of floating hydrilla, there is nothing more effective than a grabber.
Others use a whacker to stun frogs, but it takes practice, as a hard beat down will kill a frog, and you’ll have to ice him down. A frog whacker takes a bit of getting used to, and it’s more of a finesse smack on the nose of the frog than a full blow.
“No grabber goes in my boat,” Brown said. “I bring a net with me, in case they are on the bank or in case they’re up in the woods. You can switch over to the little net and catch him, but in the water, we strictly use our hands. It’s faster in these little boats like mine.”
Regardless of what tool you decide to use, frogs that have been heavily hunted become wild. The least little things disturb them. One is a shadow passing between the frog and the spotter’s headlight. Be sure if you’re doing the catching to stay out of the spotter’s light that is shining the frog. They’ll spook otherwise.
There are differences between hunting the marsh along the coastline and hunting the Basin.
“It’s easier frogging in the marsh because you don’t have all of the cypress knees, stumps, trees and everything else to go through,” Brown said. “In the ponds in the marsh, you just go through the lilies and idle on top of the grass and go through it. In the Basin, sometimes you got to run a half hour to 45 minutes to get to another spot, and in the marsh you have more frogs.”
Someone else who plans to be out May 31, before midnight is Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Senior Enforcement Agent Scott Dupre and Sergeant Ross Mire.
“It’s pretty common, every opening night — the 31st — they just can’t help themselves,” Dupre said. “The biggest problem is you have those people who are sitting there waiting, and you have several people who know the pond and want to be there at midnight.
“One person will get greedy, and they want to get a head start before someone else does. Then the person waiting is like, ‘They’re going to catch all the frogs,’ so they start frogging it, and it just starts a whole snowball effect.”
For the agents, it’s being in the right place knowing where the frogs are.
“It’s hard for us with so many acres of parish and district to cover,” Mire said. “We have to know where the frogs are, and we try to be there. We make a few cases, and we miss some, or we might see them and we can’t get to them. So this year we have some equipment that will help that, and we’ll be there to enforce it May 31.”
The 60-year-old Brown, who loves frog hunting even more than deer hunting and taking a 10-point buck, won’t be one of those gun-jumpers.
“When the clock strikes 12, you can turn the light on,” he said. “You can turn it on before and kinda shop around, but if you put a frog in the boat and the man pulls up, you’re illegal.”
“So, there’ll be a big crowd tonight?” the frog says, letting his vanity get the best of him.
“Absolutely,” I tell him with a wink. “June 1 is always a big night, and after midnight the crowds really start to pick up — if you get my drift. We love a great ro-um-ro-um sing along, and the spotlights will really be on you and the whole chorus line for that matter.”