LIVETARGET is proud to usher in a new era of frog bait design with its introduction of the Freestyle Frog, a surface commotion soft plastic bait that can also be fished beneath the waterline. Featuring the company’s Injected Core Technology™ (ICT), it offers an unmatched life-like frog profile, making it a standout in an otherwise crowded lure category.
Back in 2010 LIVETARGET introduced the Hollow Body Frog. It elevated top water fishing to a whole new level. Now, with the development of Injected Core Technology, LIVETARGET is able to bring that same anatomy, detailed color and effortless action to a bait that not only performs well on top of the water but can also trigger bites under the surface. The Freestyle Frog’s curly, twin-tail legs are transparent and less noticeable than baits manufactured using traditional injection methods. This leaves game fish much more tempted to strike the natural frog profile.
Exceptionally life-like, the Freestyle Frog incorporates LIVETARGET’s Injected Core Technology, providing a natural-looking appearance so anglers can truly Match-the-Hatch®. A specialized injection manufacturing process, ICT enables the lure’s Inner-Core to host a precise frog profile while encapsulated in an Exo-Skin covering that drives the lure’s signature action. The Inner-Core provides vibrant, living realism that game fish simply can’t resist while the tough Exo-Skin exterior virtually vanishes.
The principle behind this new bait design comes from hours spent studying frogs in their natural habitat. Watch a frog for a little while and you’ll notice it spends a lot of time on the water’s surface crossing lily pads and other vegetation. But frogs also dart underwater while crossing small channels, open pockets, paralleling weed edges, or repositioning in blowdowns and shoreline brush. That puts them at risk of ending up nose-to-nose with a lunker bass, pike or muskie and makes them just as vulnerable below the surface as they are above it.
It’s that total vulnerability that LIVETARGET set out to replicate in a bait that can ultimately double your opportunities for trophy encounters. The end result is the Freestyle Frog, a versatile bait that can be fished over and across vegetation or twitched erratically underneath the surface in open runs similar to how you might work a sinking soft plastic toad. Essentially two baits in one, the Freestyle Frog increases the amount of water that can be probed with a single frog bait.
Setting up the Freestyle Frog is simple; Texas-rig with a 5/0, 6/0 or 7/0 Owner Jungle or similar hook for surface action or use an EWG hook and bullet weight to work below the surface. Control of the bait is easy too—simply lift your rod tip to work over pads and surface vegetation or point the rod tip down to swim the frog through sections of open water between fish-holding structure. You can work it back either above or below the surface. With a straight retrieve; take advantage of the broad flapping action, sputtering sound and turbulent bubble trail generated by the raised V-tails. Or, pop it across the surface like a traditional frog, twitching it erratically to provoke smashing strikes. Speed up your retrieve for aggressive bites and slow things down if the fish need a little more time to commit.
One of the most significant advantages of ICT is the ratio of plastic between the Inner-Core and Exo-Skin. The Inner-Core is much smaller than the overall cubic mass of the entire lure. That means anglers can present a smaller hatch size but still have the advantages of throwing a bigger bait. The Exo-Skin adds 30% more clear plastic which adds more weight, enabling anglers to cast farther and feel more direct contact with the lure. For the first time ever, anglers can fish smaller hatches for big bites.
(516) Albino/White
(517) Black/Black
(514) Emerald/Brown
(512) Floro Green/Yellow
(502) Tan/Brown
(500) Green/Yellow
(523) Pearlescent Bronze
The new LIVETARGET Freestyle Frog comes in three sizes to meet a variety of fishing applications (4 inch/100mm; 3 ½ inch/90mm; and 3 inch/75 mm), as well as eight realistic forage-matching colors. The LIVETARGET Freestyle Frog comes in packs of two with an MSRP of $9.99 USD.