Southcentral Louisiana has acres and acres of marshes and swamps that look like they’ve been hit by an Egyptian plague.
What do shade, loose cotton clothing and a koozie holding a cold beverage mean in July for Louisianans? Simply one thing — the hot dog days of summer are here. What’s more, who wants to go fishing on Saturday when you can sleep in — in the air conditioning?
Take the opportunity to beat the heat by enjoying some mid-summer nighttime madness whacking frogs in central Louisiana.
With Morgan City at the center, seal-beam sporting insomniacs can go in any direction and find some of the hottest frog hunting action this side of the Nile. I can almost hear Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses scream, “Get them off of me,” followed by some crazy Cajun saying, “Mais! Pharaoh, I tink I can help you wit dat, me.”
The point is, there is no shortage of frying size bullfrogs or pig frogs in this region.
Those who think the season should be closed prior to the April and May spawning period in order to reduce the number of egg-laden females harvested need not to worry, according to Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologist Jeff Boundy.
“Just because they’re full of eggs doesn’t mean they’re pregnant,” he said. “You’re not taking a pregnant female; you’re taking a female with eggs. Look at any human female, they have eggs, but it doesn’t mean they’re pregnant.”
Frogs are creatures that live close to the bottom of the food chain, and will lay a mass of some 20,000 eggs. Though they have a high mortality rate, large numbers live the two to three years it takes to become a mature bullfrog.
When hunting, we’ll pass up the smaller frogs, giving them time to grow, and focus on the bigger, more mature bulls.
“If we start hearing, ‘It’s not like it used to be,’ then we will start doing some studies,” Boundy said. “But here’s what you’ve got to do if you’re concerned about taking too many females. Tell your buddies to take a look at the tympanic membrane behind their eye to see if they’re female or not.”
Boundy went on to point out the LDWF completes surveys on annual routes they run each year. He predicted that hurricanes Katrina and Rita were bound to have had an effect on frog populations in some areas as saltwater would prevent eggs from developing.
Though southcentral Louisiana’s coastal marshes were impacted by saltwater intrusion leading to fish kills from Rita, early pre-spawn frog hunting reports coming from the surrounding area were good to excellent the last week of March. What’s more, some of those reports may have resulted from the one benefit hurricane Rita left in her aftermath — open bayous and canals.
Patterson local Mike Clifton enjoys spending time with his family at their camp in Stephensville. When the kids are out of school during the summer, weekends typically find them wreaking a little havoc on the local amphibian population of the surrounding area.
“There are places all along the edges of Grassy Lake that are real good,” he said. “When you come from Persimmon Pass, there are a lot of little cutoffs and chutes you can go into that hold a good number of frogs. Bear Bayou across Flat Lake is good too.”
Clifton pointed out that the bayous around Stephensville where he does most of his frog hunting are fairly shallow, making it difficult to get around in an outboard.
“Because it’s so shallow, we’ll use Go-Devils,” he said. “They work when you’re trying to catch a mess of frogs in Stephensville.”
Perhaps most noteworthy is Clifton’s methodology when it comes to filling the frog sack. He likes to use the “smiley face.”
For those unfamiliar with a smiley face, it’s a homemade aluminum frog whacker or paddle, about 4 feet long, that resembles something you would expect boiled crawfish to be stirred with.
Clifton and several of his co-workers at Kidder Incorporated, a local aluminum fabrication shop located in Bayou Vista, have worked hard on the development of the whacker. Give a hunter a piece of drop aluminum and a wire feed, and there is no telling what he is going to come up with; chances are it will be for something to use down the bayou.
“It has gone through a bunch of revisions from trial and error and several prototypes,” Clifton said. “We have tried to get the most efficient striker without the water splash that goes with whacking a frog.
“There is a technique we use where we actually don’t smack them, we sort of tap them on their nose. It doesn’t kill them; it just knocks them out for a minute. Later, they come right back to life.
“I used my hands for a long time, and very seldom missed a frog. When I went to the smiley face, it really worked. Whenever you put your hands on a smiley face, you’re not going to go back to using your hands. It’s fun; it really is.”
I have tried the whacker, and found it on par with my frog gig that is my primary weapon when I go out on nighttime ambush. It took a few practice attempts to get the right amount of whack, smack, tap or whatever you want to call it. Let’s just say it took the frogs a little longer to come to, and a few, well, God rest their souls.
Other areas in close proximity are points southward down river from Morgan City.
“I find the area below the Intracoastal totally different than where we hunt in Stephensville,” Clifton said. “Below the Intracoastal, I’ve found that the cut grass holds big frogs. It’s hard to swing the smiley face in there, but what you catch is huge. A buddy and I hunted Little Wax Bayou, and we racked up along there.
“In Stephensville, the cover is so heavy sometimes we have to use a frog net, because you have to get under things, but down below you don’t have that problem as often.”
Frog hunters who venture below the Intracoastal Canal will find most of this area is marshland bayou that has a mix of cut grass, flag grass and bull tongue along the banks. Most every bayou is cut with a canal that large bullfrogs love.
What’s great about canal bank hunting is that it can be done from an outboard and normally produces some nice frogs. When hunting canals, a net is vital. Frogs tend to be back under low-hanging tree limbs and underbrush.
There’s nothing like shining the seal-beam on a big bank-sitting bull frog and dropping the net on him. He can’t dive, like on the water, and his first reaction is straight up. He literally leaps into your net.
The best time to hunt bayous is on a low tide — especially late summer when the fronts start coming through. Mud flats will produce an abundance of frogs sitting out in the clear open. This is where a long-handled net is invaluable if you’re in an outboard, Go-Devil or Gator Tail.
Airboats clearly are the Hummers of bushwhacking, frog-smacking watercraft. They can go where no man has gone before. But they do have a couple of operator concerns.
Since they are an uber (as my sons say) shallow watercraft, they want to slide on wet, slick mud flats. The guy up front doing the grabbing, whacking or gigging has got to be real fast and on his A-game.
The heavier V-8 laden airboats tend to push water. Frogs resting on top of the grass in shallow water will spook when a wave lifts them up and down rapidly.
When a frog is spotted, the driver needs to slow the boat down to an idle prior to engaging the frog, so as to minimize water push as much as possible. Additionally, it is important to maneuver for the optimal side-grab attack versus head on — especially while your boat is moving.
Once the seal-beam is on a frog about to be caught, it is important that no one passes between the light shining on the frog, which creates a shadow. A quick-passing shadow causes a frog to spook.
Rare is the occasion when a frog will let you come to a complete stop and grab him. During the fall and winter months, it’s more common because frogs are cold-blooded creatures. Just like a stiff alligator trying to get off the bank in the springtime after you interrupted his sun bathing, in the spring frogs are less agile. Not true during the dog days.
Windy nights, though productive, present a different challenge, as the frogs tend to be spooky and a bit wild. I’ve spotted them on the other side of the pond or a half reach up the bayou only to have them bound off in thick cover or dive before I had a chance to maneuver into attack mode.
My most recent hunt with my fellow frog-smacking partner, Shane Wiggins, found us battling high water and windy conditions. Using Shane’s airboat, we were hunting below Centerville, south of the Intracoastal in some oil-field canals.
Though the frogs were wild, they were also plentiful. The canal banks that we hunted, were overgrown with Texas jacks, myrtle and willow trees. The trees and underbrush acted as a windbreak the frogs seemed to prefer.
As it turned out, we could have saved some gas by using my outboard. We had initially planned to hunt some ponds, but found the pickings mighty slim. Most of the frogs we caught were in the canals and along the interconnecting bayous.
The frogs along the bayou banks sat huddled with their backs to thick grass. Several times, they would dive in the grass on our approach.
We passed up everything small and brought home an even 50 huge bullfrogs for a couple hours work. The same night, hunting in a different location near Wax Lake, Shane’s brother Brian and his running buddy caught nearly a hundred using the outboard — all big bullfrogs.
The best part of the hunt was nearly all of the frogs we’re caught using the net. Wiggins would idle within range of my modified marine antennae rig, and I’d drop the net’s halo ring on top of the unsuspecting amphibians. For a long, lightweight net handle, you can’t beat a discarded marine antenna — not to mention its durability.
Deep-fried jumbo frog legs are hard to beat. There are all kinds of batters you can use or concoct. But sometimes less is more. Simply adding a light layer of flour and then salt and pepper to taste is more than enough.
The trick with frog legs is to not overcook them. Set your fryer’s temperature at 350 degrees, and deep fry them until they float — not a minute longer.
Southcentral Louisiana may not be the Egyptian Nile, as most folks who live hereabouts tend to be in good standing with the Lord. But when it comes to frogs, it’s close, and if the Lord is trying to get our attention, He might want to try a different plague.
