Lunkerhunt Frog Review – A Review of the Lunkerhunt Lunker Frog

There is a ton of debate circling around the internet regarding the Lunkerhunt Lunker Frog and its quality. That is pretty understandable considering that this hollow bodied frog is unlike pretty much every other soft frog out there. Coming across a good Lunkerhunt Frog review can be tedious to say the least. What makes this lure different from the others? One word. Legs. This lure has a pair of kicking and retracting legs that extend on the retrieve and retract on the pause. This lure does not utilize the traditional frog skirts like almost every other frog lure out there.

If you were to remove the legs from this particular fishing lure, you would end up with a considerably similar presentation that can be found almost everywhere. Does replacing the silicone skirts add any bite appeal? Does taking the skirts off influence its ability to perform in the water? What can be said about the Lunker Frog that cannot be said about some of the other best hollow body frogs on the market? Today, we are going to try and fill in some of those blanks for you. Hopefully, we will answer some of your questions about if you try it out.

This is an in depth review of the Lunkerhunt Lunker Frog. This is a hollow body frog of a medium size and is comparable to the size of many competing topwater lures. You can often find this lure and others like it at local tackle supply retailers and local supermarkets such as Wal-Mart and Dick’s Sporting Goods. It has a few cousins that are similar in design as well as appearance. They are made by the same company. There is a smaller version called the pocket frog. This is just the same lure but it is very small. There is also another one that is very similar but has a slightly bigger size as well as swollen sides. This review will not cover any of those.

Product: Lunker Frog

Manufacturer: Lunkerhunt

Type Of Lure: Hollow Body Frog

Hook Quality: Great

Realism: Excellent

Value: Average

My Rating: 4 Stars

The Truth About Frogging

Frogging ultimately boils down to two very important factors. The first is what you are imitating. When you fish a frog, you are not just imitating frogs. You are also imitating Bluegill, your imitating Shad, mice, small birds, Goldfish, rodents, snakes, and many other things. Ultimately, anything and everything a big bass wants to eat, you can imitate it with a frog. Most of the time, that is just by changing the color or retrieve. The second factor is fishing the cover. Frogs were designed to be thrown into the nastiest weeds and grass mats. If your frog cannot stay weedless or perform well in this type of environment where the huge bass live, you might as well use it for open water fishing only. If you are using a frog for exclusively fishing open water, it makes little sense to use it when you could tie on a reaction lure and do the same thing much quicker covering more water. In learning how to fish with frogs, be precise in these two factors. They are very important. So in a frog lure, it needs to imitate something a bass wants to eat and perform well in the vegetation.

What About Those Legs?

The most common complaint about these frogs is the durability of the lure’s legs. There are some reports of the legs on these frogs lasting forever and then some. Then there are those that mention the life of the legs to be about three or four fish. It is a genuine concern. The truth is that the connecting points for the legs are not all that durable on these specific lures. It really isn’t the legs that are the problem. It is the way they are designed and attached to the lure. Instead of being fused to the body, they are connected via lips on the legs that fit snugly into the holes. Sometimes, when a fish hits it, the plastic around the lip stretches or rips causing the lure to lose one leg or both. Lots of time when a big bass hits it, they only short strike the frog. When you are frog fishing, you often have to let the fish get the lure fully in its mouth. If you set the hook when the lure has skirts on it, you just take the skirts out of the fish’s mouth and nothing much else happens. When you attempt to do that with this frog however, the legs stretch substantially and can easily rip the plastic keeping it connected to the body.

How Well Does It Keep Out Water?

It tends to get water in the body quite often. You might feel the need to squeeze the body of the bait every other cast because of the lure’s tenancy to take on water. Many suggestions include filling up the nose with super glue to reduce this. After a couple of frogs and a couple of bottles of super glue, it is safe to conclude that this method only helps somewhat. It doesn’t stop it. It reduces it. I still find myself needing to squeeze the water out of the body about every nine or ten casts. If squeezing the water out of your frog doesn’t bother you, this will not hinder your fish catching success on this lure.

Walking The Frog

It doesn’t walk very well. You can get it to walk somewhat but the legs actually get in the way of this. Since they are just hanging down and they displace water of their own, walking the frog can present itself as a real challenge sometimes. If you remove the legs, however, it actually walks almost as well as the other frogs on the market. In addition to that, it just doesn’t make sense to purchase a lure like this if you are going to take the legs off. I think you would be better off purchasing a frog with the skirts that is actually designed to walk across the water. If it does an equal job, at least it will be a more durable bait.

How Does It Perform on Stop And Go Retrieves?

The action that the frog is supposed to have when it is pulled from a still position looks more like a frog jumping than swimming. The swimming action and extension of the legs happens but it happens very quickly. Much quicker than a real frog if it were swimming. If anything, this bait looks very realistic when sitting on top of lily pads. After you pop the frog off of the pads and into the water, fish often strike it at that point because of how good it looks.

A Rainbow Of Colors

There certainly is no shortage of colors when it comes to the Lunker Frog. Similar to the Live Target frog, the realism certainly is the eye catcher in this bait. It appears that looking pretty awesome is what makes individuals purchase the lure. That is a fine reason, but the quality of everything else in the lure leaves much to be desired. In addition to the legs, they have very natural colors like green tea, bullfrog, croaker, and leopard. This will naturally and adequately mimic most natural frog patterns in the world. Wherever frogs exist, these colors will copy it quite well. Natural colored frogs are usually used for clear water fishing. If you have clear water, you want to put a natural color in front of the fish. In addition to the natural offerings that often hint at real frogs by utilizing shades of green in their paint jobs, they also offer darker variations of the lure for when the water is dirty or if you are fishing at night. These colors include Rocky toad which is a gray version of the green tea pattern, texas toad which is almost a completely black colored frog, and poison. The poison color consists of a black frog with a spotted yellow paint job. In reality, this is supposed to mimic a yellow-banded poison dart frog, which is a highly toxic amphibian. Although bass, pike, and muskellunge are unlikely to realize that the offering may be harmful to their health, the color is still there to catch them. There is a single color called pearl which is for the most part, white. This is supposed to imitate a frog with an albino birth defect. In the wild, animals that are born albino have lost the gene that causes the pigmentation in their skin. As a result, very few albino animals survive and are often snatched up by predators. That is good. When you are frogging, you are after predators anyway. The last color they offer is called fire belly which is going for an accurate representation of the fire bellied toads. It is a very clever idea, yet you will almost never find a toad in the water. If anything, it looks more like a crayfish than a frog or toad. Still, this one will allow you to successfully catch fish when the bass or other predators are feeding on crayfish. A crayfish at the surface is a very easy meal because they usually hold to the bottom and seek shelter in the rocks to avoid predators.

Conclusion

To sum it up, the Lunker Frog from Lunkerhunt is a very great lure and I recommend it but it has a few minor setbacks that can turn the money-saving angler in the other direction. It entices bites from huge as well as finicky fish because of the realism associated with the legs and paint jobs. The first problem is the durability of this bait. This bait will not last you for years and years to come like other frogs. It is just to fragile. Those legs can rip off and the material used can be ripped easier than the skirts can on other frogs. While we can pretty much agree that no lure is perfect and all fishing lures have some areas in which they can improve, this particular one lacks in a certain feature that is required when you are frog fishing. While you want a durable rod and durable braid on your frogging setup, you should also have a lure that is quite durable. This bait also fills up with water. This is not something you want happening when your lure is a topwater. It makes it sink and it negatively effects the action of the bait. All in all, they have caught many fish and will likely continue to for years to come. A good Lunker Frog review is hard to come by simply because there is so much information regarding this lure circling around the internet. If I had any suggestions that I could personally give to Lunkerhunt about the quality of this bait, I would say to make it more durable and stop water from getting into it. Other than that, it is a very fabulous lure to own and use. It catches a ton of fish and I highly recommend giving it a try more than once.

What has been your experience with these lures? Have you ever tried this bait? How did it work? How did it hold up? Let us know down in the comments!