June 23, 2023 • 21 mins
Welcome back to This Country Life. This week on the show, our buddy Brent is gonna tell you all about frog gigging, one of his favorite summertime activities. He's gonna cover everything from the end of your spear to the end of your fork. Brent's also gonna touch on regulations, and just what becomes of the folks who throw the regs to the wayside. If you've got a body of water with some bullfrogs near you (and you probably do), you're not going to want to miss this one.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two the teacher frog gigging.
If there's a more identifiable country summer nighttime grocery gathering
(00:47):
endeavor than frog gigging, I don't know what it'd be.
What other activity combines water, the darkness, a flashlight, sneaking
up on prey and going home with a toasack full
of goodies better than frog gigging? I dare say none.
There's different ways to do it, but the end goal
is to get a mess big enough to get the
(01:08):
grease to stinking. I'm going to tell you where to
find them, how we catch them, how we clean them,
and how we cook them up. Better get you a
snack before you listen, cause you're going to be hunger
when we get done. But first I'm going to tell
you a story of how I came to poking holes
and frogs on the History Channel in twenty eleven, we
(01:35):
were sitting at the table eating supper when an unknown
number from Los Angeles ring on my cellphone. I didn't answer.
Had to be a wrong number. I didn't know anybody
in Los Angeles. We finished eating and they called back.
Now I have to admit I love wrong numbers and
texts from wrong numbers. They're like a bird nest on
the ground. They're easy pickings, Like the time I got
(01:58):
a random text from someone at a conference who was bored,
and it went something like, this is this the right
number for your new phone? Lisa? This is Janet. This
conference is so boring. I wish I had an excuse
to get out of here. I'm sitting down front and
I can't turn around to see where you are. Man,
I remember this like it was yesterday. It still gives
me chills. Here was my Here was my response, Yes, Janet,
(02:23):
thank goodness you texted. I had a burrito from the
complimentary breakfast bar and I'm dying. I'm stranded in the
bathroom and no TP and my phone is almost dead,
grab a roll and run to the lobby bathroom hurry.
Thirty minutes later I got a text saying, Lisa, I've
been to the lobby in every bathroom on six floors.
Where are you. I'm not sure how that played out.
(02:46):
I blocked her number after that last one, but I
hope she had a good sense of humor. So guess what.
My phone rang again, but this time I answered and
a lady asked to speak to Reeves. I said, this
is him. She told me her name and said, I'm
a producer for the BBC. We have a new show
to be on History Channel called Harry Biker's. We saw
(03:11):
your frog hunting video on YouTube and would like to
pay you to help us film a show like what
you filmed. Now, I did have a video on YouTube
that I shot a year earlier just for fun, that
I'd posted, but I made the mistake of putting Born
on a bio by Credence Clearwater Revival with it and
quickly got it snatched off the air by John Fogery's
(03:31):
lawyer or somebody, and rightfully so. So I'm thinking to myself,
this is a crocer bull and eventually this lady's going
to ask me for my credit card number so she
can help me get rich. So I said, I'm not
interested in participating in your scam today, and I hung up.
She called back, and it's a wonder I even answered.
But when I did, she said, mister Reeves, please hear
(03:53):
me out. We're a legitimate television production company and we
want to hire you to help us produce a segment
for the show. Oh, it's an American version of a
successful show in England, and we're going to be in
Arkansas film and several activities, and think you could help
us represent your state in your way of life. I
started to believe her, but I told her if they
(04:14):
were looking for someone to help them poke fun at
people in our whale life, that she'd picked the wrong
man to help her. I wouldn't be a part of
anything like that. She assured me that they loved what
I'd filmed and they wanted the world to see what
fun we were having and how we did it. She
didn't ask me if I eat the frogs I caught,
and I remember saying yes, I'm If I didn't need them,
(04:35):
I wouldn't be running around at night jobbing holes in them.
She thought that was funny as for my address and
said she was sending me five hundred dollars. Three days later,
I got it in the mail and ran to the
bank to make sure it was good. It was a
few weeks later, and after lots of planning and coordinating,
(04:56):
the production crew and hosts showed up for two days
of filming. A month or so after that, Yours Truly
was gigging Frogs on the History Channel with Paul Patrinella
and Bill Allen. These Texas boys were compadres and traveled
around the US gathering up victials and with the locals
and cooking them the way the locals did. Then they
(05:16):
flipped the script and fixed the food according to their style.
Paul was a short enough trained professional chef, and Bill
he was like me. He just a cat that like
to cook, except he was really good at it. They
got out of the TV business after a while, and
Paul owns the Bait Barn Fisheries down in Brian, Texas,
where you can order freshwater fish for your ponds and lakes.
(05:37):
And Bill that Rascal's busier than a one armed paper hanger.
He's in Brian too, and a genuine brain surgeon caliber
mechanic at Frank's motorcycle resurrections, and even manages his sons band,
the Southern Degenerates. That sounds like the recurring theme of
My family Reunions. It was a lot of fun doing
(05:57):
that show, and I count them boys as friends. But
they still ain't asked me to come fishing with them
in the Gulf. But anyway, if you're interested in watching
that episode, you can see it for free on the
Pluto TV app. Search for Harry Baker's USA at episode
Numero Uno is finger Licking Frogs with no Beard Brent.
(06:17):
My buddy Jeremy Humphreys helped me with that project. I
don't think he's been fishing with them either, But if
they're only inviting one of us to look, Jeremy get
your own podcast. And that's just how that happened. Now,
I wonder how many folks who listen to this have
ever been frog gigging. Even better, I wonder how many
(06:40):
folks of eating them now. Just like a lot of
the people I grew up with, I love frog legs,
batter and fried and scale it. My mama didn't eat
a lot of them, but she'd cook us as many
as we wanted on one condition. She didn't want to
cook them if they hadn't been frogs. Do you know
that you can make a fresh skipp frog leg wiggle
and twitch with just a pinch of salt put on them?
(07:02):
Apparently rigor mortis doesn't set in as fast with frogs
as it does other creatures, and fresh frog legs still
have some cells that can respond to stimulus and salt
hot grease. It can make them twitch. It would freak
my mama out, and we could hear her every time
it happened, regardless of where we were inside or out.
(07:24):
First things first, we got to catch them to cook them,
and there may be no cheaper source of entertainment. When
it comes to the equipment, you need to start gathering
them up because you really only need a light to
see in the dark with the blind the frog while
you slipping up on it. Now, when I was young,
and I can't tell you how many of those old
(07:44):
six Volk batteries I went through that attached with two
wires to a little light that was rigged up on
the headstrap. The metal bracket that held that light was
flat as a flitter, and by the end of the
night it made your forehead feel like Chuck Norris have
been using it for target practice. I started using my
coon hunting light after that, and that was an old
carbide light i'd wired up on my cap. I got
(08:06):
my first one when I was twelve from Johnson's Hardware
store and I paid eight dollars for it. If you
don't know what a carboyd light is, you'ta look that up.
I was basically walking around in the woods with an
open flame of settling torch burning on my head, not
kidding you. Adjusted the brightness by how much gas was
fed to the flame through a valve that was connected
(08:28):
to a small reservoir of carbide that sat under a
small container of water that dripped onto the carbide, creating
settling gas. Now what parent wouldn't want their child walking
around with a flamethrower strapped to their face. I'd love
to have that thing back, And if anyone out there
has one that works and they'd part with it, hit
(08:49):
me up on the old Gram and let me know.
And before we get to catching them, we got a
no word to look and win. Well. The wind is
easy when the frogs come out, And ten times out
of ten the frogs come out at night. That's one
of the ones we're after, do anyway, And the one
we're after is the American bullfrog frog nerds. Get your
(09:11):
pencils ready and understand I'm not John Prine and talking
ugly and Hawaiian. I'm fixing to speak Latin. Leido badez
cadis bajanas is the Latin name for our supper ben
bat and haight I do on that we got to
have water in just about any old water will do. Ponds, lakes, creeks,
(09:31):
boughs and rivers, they'll all fill the bill. Slow moving
portions of the streams are best, and the ones with
clean banks, well they're even better. That show we found
for the History Channel was done on a mental farm
where they kept the pond bank's mode and we could
slip down the levees, usually spying the frogs a long
time before we ever got to them. In the cottonel Us.
(09:54):
My research shows that every state except for the Peace
Garden state of North Dakota has a chorus of bullfrogs.
Do you know that's what you call a group of bullfrogs?
Of course it's a fitting a denter fire. If I
do save myself, I like to hunt them on boughs, sleughs,
(10:15):
and canals. You can get a small on a boat
or a pi row or a kayak, anything that will
cruise along in shallow water and use a push pole,
a paddle or a trolling motor to quietly ease down
the edges. That's where you're gonna find a old bully.
It'll be sitting right near the edge of the bank,
on the ground or in the water. Their eyes will
(10:36):
shine easy enough, but one thing I always look for
is that whitish colored patch of their throat, and most
times it's just as easy to see as their eyes.
If the woods are flooded, you can find them sitting
on logs, big lily pads, floating around moss, just about anywhere.
The key to the whole operation is having a steady
(10:56):
beam of light directed in that rascal's eyes to keep
them still along on them for you to get close
enough to add him to your limit. Gig Man, stay
focused on that frog and be ready in case he
starts to get away, but not so focused that you're
not aware of your surroundings. A good friend of mine
(11:21):
tells the tale of when he was a game warden
and received a complaint of someone gigging frogs out of season.
The frog season usually opens around the middle of April here,
but this spring had been unusually warm and frogs were
everywhere on this farm, and these boys were helping themselves
a few weeks too early, and on top of that,
(11:41):
they were supposedly seldom without a license. There was a
big cypress boo that wound through that property, and he
said it was covered up with frogs. So after getting
the complaint, he went down and snuck into a good
hiding spot to sit and watch for him. He did
it two nights in a row parking, hiding his truck,
(12:02):
walking a long way to his hiding spot, sitting in
the dark and watching him, waiting and listening for them,
and never saw a thing. He went back on the
third night and was just about to leave when he
saw a flash of light and heard him coming his way.
In a few minutes, he saw three folks in a
little aluminum boat going back and forth from bank to bank.
(12:24):
The man in the back was running the little troll
to motor, the man in the middle was holding the spotlight,
and the guy up front was gigging the frogs. My
friend slipped down from his hiding spot and stood behind
a big cypress tree waiting for the men to get
close enough to catch The bable was wide enough that
if he announced himself too soon, they could be on
the other bank, ditch the boat and get away, so
(12:46):
he had to let him get close enough that he
could at least identify them if they ran. He watched
him for ten or fifteen minutes as they got closer
and closer, going back and forth across that canal, gigging frogs.
When he thought they were getting close enough, he saw
that beam of lights surround the tree he was hiding behind.
He said he knew right then that they'd seen him,
(13:07):
and he went to step out from behind the tree
and try to get a look at their faces. As
he started moving around that tree, he saw a huge
bullfrog sitting in front of that tree he was hiding behind.
He said, it was like he was hunting over a decoy.
They had no clue he was there watching them, peeking
around that tree. He could see them all focused on
(13:28):
that frog as the light got closer and closer, and
he heard them talking back and forth about how big
it was. He could also see that the only visible
weapon they had in the open was the frog gig.
When they got right near the bank, and that gig
was only seconds away from sabbing that frog. He stuck
his arm around the tree and grabbed the frog gig,
(13:50):
snatched it out of the man's hand and simultaneously saying
game warders. He said it was the blood curdling squeal
of the man in the front that caused man in
the middle to drop the spylight and start screaming too.
They both started running out the back of the boat
and over top of the man in the back, who
started screaming, what is it? What is it? What is it?
(14:12):
He turned on his flashlight and hollered game warding again.
They stopped running through the waist deep water and mud
and crawled out on the bank where he was standing.
He said they was actually seemed to relieve that they
were only getting tickets and that a boogerman hadn't got them.
Oh lord, there's three legal ways to catch frogs in Arkansas,
(14:34):
and that's what I'm talking about. So y'all be sure
and check with your state laws and do what's right here.
If you're sixteen or older, you're going to have to
have a fishing license. In Texas you'll need a hunting license,
so wherever you are, make sure you get what you need.
In Arkansas, you can catch them with your hands, use
a gig or a spring loaded grabber attached to a pole,
(14:57):
or a bow and arrow, and the last way, be
it or not, is to fish for them. Now. Using
your hands is my least favorite for two reasons, and
those reasons are number one, I don't like poking my
hands in dark places where cotton mouse live. And number two,
I don't like poking my hands in dark places where
cotton mouse live. I got snake bit once, and I'll
(15:18):
tell you all that story another day. Another thing about
using your hands, you have to walk right up on
them or run the boat right up on them, and
sometimes you'll make a racket or hit a stob and
spook the frog, causing them to jump and get away,
even though you got him blinded with a light. I've
never used a bowl in ara, but that sounds like fun,
(15:40):
especially if I used archery equipment. I don't think I'd
to be slinging frog airs out of my compound. Probably
be a better idea to get you a traditional bowl
or recurve and do some instinctive shooting with a fishing era.
They're attached to your bowl with a real or by
a spool, and you can shoot them and then reel
them in. I can't think of a better way to
stay and practice for archery. It's sure beach standing in
(16:03):
the backyard shooting a styrofoam target that wouldn't taste good
even if a Harry Biker cooked it. Fishing for frogs
is an easy way to let everybody have a cracking
catch and supper. If you knew the frogging and you
haven't developed those long forgotten caveman skills the chunking spears,
let the frog catch himself. Just get you a long
(16:23):
cane pole or a jig pole, attach a few feet
of fishing line and tie cropper jig on it and
dangle it in front of that frog. Frogs are predators
and they'll eat just about anything. Once he bites it,
just pull him to you and drop him in the sack,
and then it's on to the next one. If I
got to making some notes and getting organized to talk
to you all about frog fishing, I found a whole
(16:46):
bunch of videos of folks catching frogs this way on
the interwebs forget walleye fishing, seth and Chester. The bullfrog
tournament trail is where it's at, plus no waiting frogs.
I've used the grabber before. It's a tension loaded apparatus
that folks gig fish with too. The proty using a
grabber is when you gig the frog, you're really just
(17:09):
catching him. The trigger hits that frog when you spear him,
and tension loaded springs collapse and the jaws of the
graver they come together and trap the frog instead of
poking new holes in him that he wasn't designed to
live with. Then you just drop him in the ice
chest or in your tosac and move on to the
next one. All your frogs stay fresh and you can
(17:29):
wait and clean them in the morning without any problem.
The cons he using a grabber, and my experience is
that joker will go off if you bump something in
the boat or hitt on limb at the worst possible time,
usually spooking your supper away. And fresh frogs are always
trying to get back from whence they came, and you'll
spend some of your time re catching the frogs that
(17:50):
hop out of the bag or the ice chest. I
like to catch my frogs once, and when I'm using
a gig. It ain't like I'm running a sword through
them and throwing them in the dungeon to slow to
meet their fate. That would be cruel and unnecessary. It's
just a frog, someone would say, Well, it may be,
but they're a creature we've been given dominion over to utilize, enjoy,
(18:11):
and respect, even if it is just a frog. When
I pull him off the gig, I give him a
good watch four on the knogging and by taking hold
of his legs and using the part of his head
where his hat would go for a hammer on the
side of the boat, wham and drop him in the bucket.
Now you got to mess the dead frogs, And if
you ain't planning on cleaning them when you get done,
(18:32):
you better have some ice ready to keep them good
and cold till you get ready to ject the breeches
off of them the next morning. That's easy too, and
I'm fixed to tell you how to do it. You
gonna need a dead bullfrog, any kind of kitchen shears,
a pair of plyers, and a pocket knife. You know
what kind of pocket knife. Grab your shears and cut
his feet off at the ankles. Then with your pocket knife,
(18:55):
cut a line across his back about even with the
armpits of his front leg. Take your plyers and grab
a hold of the skin as you just cut, and
take your other hand and grab him just above that cut,
using his front legs for leverage. Pull down with you plyers,
and just that easy off comes his breeches. Then I'll
(19:16):
take the shears and cut across where his back meets
his legs. You should have two legs ready for fry.
Some folks will separator or leave them together. What are
you preferred on mat? All right, somebody get the peet
up old to three hundred and twenty five degrees. We're
(19:37):
about to get busy cooking up our veentles. Buttermilk, egg
flyour salt and pepper. That's about his basic and he
gets and that's all you need to cook up a
mess that's really good food. I like to add a
little crawfish bowl and lemon pepper to my fly. I
talked about that batter mixture on the Catching Catfish with
Trotlines episode. If you ain't heard that one, you need
(20:00):
to get your ears over there on that one and
get to listening. Sometimes I'll go with two parts fired
to one part cornmeal if I'm feeling fancy, and I'll
use the same spices or a combination. There ain't no rules.
Just fix them the way you like them. But when
you fix them, holler at me when they're ready. A
basic way to make them is mix that egg up
(20:22):
in a bowl of buttermilk, dip the legs in there,
and then roll them in the flour that you've added
spices to and drop them into grease. You can double
up the dipping process legs and buttermilk, then in fly
back to buttermilk again, back in the fire to give
them that extra crust. Man, it's good if you deep
(20:42):
fry them. Well, you know how much oil you need
If you do it in a skillet, about a quarter
to a half inch is plenty. The best part of
this activity is it's one of many ways to introduce
children to the outdoors and the concept of being self reliant.
With your help, you can teach them that darkness can
be inviting and wonderful, filled with adventure and fun. I
(21:06):
hope y'all be inspired to get out with the little
folks and have fun. Schools out and when I was young,
and school being out meant that school was in with
my dad. There's a whole other world going on out
there at night, and it's responsibility of those of us
who are familiar with it to show those that ain't
how good it is. We value and look out for
(21:29):
the things we love, even if it is just a fraud.
This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my stories and the country skills that will help you
beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
(00:25):
outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
think I got a thing or two the teacher frog gigging.
If there's a more identifiable country summer nighttime grocery gathering
(00:47):
endeavor than frog gigging, I don't know what it'd be.
What other activity combines water, the darkness, a flashlight, sneaking
up on prey and going home with a toasack full
of goodies better than frog gigging? I dare say none.
There's different ways to do it, but the end goal
is to get a mess big enough to get the
(01:08):
grease to stinking. I'm going to tell you where to
find them, how we catch them, how we clean them,
and how we cook them up. Better get you a
snack before you listen, cause you're going to be hunger
when we get done. But first I'm going to tell
you a story of how I came to poking holes
and frogs on the History Channel in twenty eleven, we
(01:35):
were sitting at the table eating supper when an unknown
number from Los Angeles ring on my cellphone. I didn't answer.
Had to be a wrong number. I didn't know anybody
in Los Angeles. We finished eating and they called back.
Now I have to admit I love wrong numbers and
texts from wrong numbers. They're like a bird nest on
the ground. They're easy pickings, Like the time I got
(01:58):
a random text from someone at a conference who was bored,
and it went something like, this is this the right
number for your new phone? Lisa? This is Janet. This
conference is so boring. I wish I had an excuse
to get out of here. I'm sitting down front and
I can't turn around to see where you are. Man,
I remember this like it was yesterday. It still gives
me chills. Here was my Here was my response, Yes, Janet,
(02:23):
thank goodness you texted. I had a burrito from the
complimentary breakfast bar and I'm dying. I'm stranded in the
bathroom and no TP and my phone is almost dead,
grab a roll and run to the lobby bathroom hurry.
Thirty minutes later I got a text saying, Lisa, I've
been to the lobby in every bathroom on six floors.
Where are you. I'm not sure how that played out.
(02:46):
I blocked her number after that last one, but I
hope she had a good sense of humor. So guess what.
My phone rang again, but this time I answered and
a lady asked to speak to Reeves. I said, this
is him. She told me her name and said, I'm
a producer for the BBC. We have a new show
to be on History Channel called Harry Biker's. We saw
(03:11):
your frog hunting video on YouTube and would like to
pay you to help us film a show like what
you filmed. Now, I did have a video on YouTube
that I shot a year earlier just for fun, that
I'd posted, but I made the mistake of putting Born
on a bio by Credence Clearwater Revival with it and
quickly got it snatched off the air by John Fogery's
(03:31):
lawyer or somebody, and rightfully so. So I'm thinking to myself,
this is a crocer bull and eventually this lady's going
to ask me for my credit card number so she
can help me get rich. So I said, I'm not
interested in participating in your scam today, and I hung up.
She called back, and it's a wonder I even answered.
But when I did, she said, mister Reeves, please hear
(03:53):
me out. We're a legitimate television production company and we
want to hire you to help us produce a segment
for the show. Oh, it's an American version of a
successful show in England, and we're going to be in
Arkansas film and several activities, and think you could help
us represent your state in your way of life. I
started to believe her, but I told her if they
(04:14):
were looking for someone to help them poke fun at
people in our whale life, that she'd picked the wrong
man to help her. I wouldn't be a part of
anything like that. She assured me that they loved what
I'd filmed and they wanted the world to see what
fun we were having and how we did it. She
didn't ask me if I eat the frogs I caught,
and I remember saying yes, I'm If I didn't need them,
(04:35):
I wouldn't be running around at night jobbing holes in them.
She thought that was funny as for my address and
said she was sending me five hundred dollars. Three days later,
I got it in the mail and ran to the
bank to make sure it was good. It was a
few weeks later, and after lots of planning and coordinating,
(04:56):
the production crew and hosts showed up for two days
of filming. A month or so after that, Yours Truly
was gigging Frogs on the History Channel with Paul Patrinella
and Bill Allen. These Texas boys were compadres and traveled
around the US gathering up victials and with the locals
and cooking them the way the locals did. Then they
(05:16):
flipped the script and fixed the food according to their style.
Paul was a short enough trained professional chef, and Bill
he was like me. He just a cat that like
to cook, except he was really good at it. They
got out of the TV business after a while, and
Paul owns the Bait Barn Fisheries down in Brian, Texas,
where you can order freshwater fish for your ponds and lakes.
(05:37):
And Bill that Rascal's busier than a one armed paper hanger.
He's in Brian too, and a genuine brain surgeon caliber
mechanic at Frank's motorcycle resurrections, and even manages his sons band,
the Southern Degenerates. That sounds like the recurring theme of
My family Reunions. It was a lot of fun doing
(05:57):
that show, and I count them boys as friends. But
they still ain't asked me to come fishing with them
in the Gulf. But anyway, if you're interested in watching
that episode, you can see it for free on the
Pluto TV app. Search for Harry Baker's USA at episode
Numero Uno is finger Licking Frogs with no Beard Brent.
(06:17):
My buddy Jeremy Humphreys helped me with that project. I
don't think he's been fishing with them either, But if
they're only inviting one of us to look, Jeremy get
your own podcast. And that's just how that happened. Now,
I wonder how many folks who listen to this have
ever been frog gigging. Even better, I wonder how many
(06:40):
folks of eating them now. Just like a lot of
the people I grew up with, I love frog legs,
batter and fried and scale it. My mama didn't eat
a lot of them, but she'd cook us as many
as we wanted on one condition. She didn't want to
cook them if they hadn't been frogs. Do you know
that you can make a fresh skipp frog leg wiggle
and twitch with just a pinch of salt put on them?
(07:02):
Apparently rigor mortis doesn't set in as fast with frogs
as it does other creatures, and fresh frog legs still
have some cells that can respond to stimulus and salt
hot grease. It can make them twitch. It would freak
my mama out, and we could hear her every time
it happened, regardless of where we were inside or out.
(07:24):
First things first, we got to catch them to cook them,
and there may be no cheaper source of entertainment. When
it comes to the equipment, you need to start gathering
them up because you really only need a light to
see in the dark with the blind the frog while
you slipping up on it. Now, when I was young,
and I can't tell you how many of those old
(07:44):
six Volk batteries I went through that attached with two
wires to a little light that was rigged up on
the headstrap. The metal bracket that held that light was
flat as a flitter, and by the end of the
night it made your forehead feel like Chuck Norris have
been using it for target practice. I started using my
coon hunting light after that, and that was an old
carbide light i'd wired up on my cap. I got
(08:06):
my first one when I was twelve from Johnson's Hardware
store and I paid eight dollars for it. If you
don't know what a carboyd light is, you'ta look that up.
I was basically walking around in the woods with an
open flame of settling torch burning on my head, not
kidding you. Adjusted the brightness by how much gas was
fed to the flame through a valve that was connected
(08:28):
to a small reservoir of carbide that sat under a
small container of water that dripped onto the carbide, creating
settling gas. Now what parent wouldn't want their child walking
around with a flamethrower strapped to their face. I'd love
to have that thing back, And if anyone out there
has one that works and they'd part with it, hit
(08:49):
me up on the old Gram and let me know.
And before we get to catching them, we got a
no word to look and win. Well. The wind is
easy when the frogs come out, And ten times out
of ten the frogs come out at night. That's one
of the ones we're after, do anyway, And the one
we're after is the American bullfrog frog nerds. Get your
(09:11):
pencils ready and understand I'm not John Prine and talking
ugly and Hawaiian. I'm fixing to speak Latin. Leido badez
cadis bajanas is the Latin name for our supper ben
bat and haight I do on that we got to
have water in just about any old water will do. Ponds, lakes, creeks,
(09:31):
boughs and rivers, they'll all fill the bill. Slow moving
portions of the streams are best, and the ones with
clean banks, well they're even better. That show we found
for the History Channel was done on a mental farm
where they kept the pond bank's mode and we could
slip down the levees, usually spying the frogs a long
time before we ever got to them. In the cottonel Us.
(09:54):
My research shows that every state except for the Peace
Garden state of North Dakota has a chorus of bullfrogs.
Do you know that's what you call a group of bullfrogs?
Of course it's a fitting a denter fire. If I
do save myself, I like to hunt them on boughs, sleughs,
(10:15):
and canals. You can get a small on a boat
or a pi row or a kayak, anything that will
cruise along in shallow water and use a push pole,
a paddle or a trolling motor to quietly ease down
the edges. That's where you're gonna find a old bully.
It'll be sitting right near the edge of the bank,
on the ground or in the water. Their eyes will
(10:36):
shine easy enough, but one thing I always look for
is that whitish colored patch of their throat, and most
times it's just as easy to see as their eyes.
If the woods are flooded, you can find them sitting
on logs, big lily pads, floating around moss, just about anywhere.
The key to the whole operation is having a steady
(10:56):
beam of light directed in that rascal's eyes to keep
them still along on them for you to get close
enough to add him to your limit. Gig Man, stay
focused on that frog and be ready in case he
starts to get away, but not so focused that you're
not aware of your surroundings. A good friend of mine
(11:21):
tells the tale of when he was a game warden
and received a complaint of someone gigging frogs out of season.
The frog season usually opens around the middle of April here,
but this spring had been unusually warm and frogs were
everywhere on this farm, and these boys were helping themselves
a few weeks too early, and on top of that,
(11:41):
they were supposedly seldom without a license. There was a
big cypress boo that wound through that property, and he
said it was covered up with frogs. So after getting
the complaint, he went down and snuck into a good
hiding spot to sit and watch for him. He did
it two nights in a row parking, hiding his truck,
(12:02):
walking a long way to his hiding spot, sitting in
the dark and watching him, waiting and listening for them,
and never saw a thing. He went back on the
third night and was just about to leave when he
saw a flash of light and heard him coming his way.
In a few minutes, he saw three folks in a
little aluminum boat going back and forth from bank to bank.
(12:24):
The man in the back was running the little troll
to motor, the man in the middle was holding the spotlight,
and the guy up front was gigging the frogs. My
friend slipped down from his hiding spot and stood behind
a big cypress tree waiting for the men to get
close enough to catch The bable was wide enough that
if he announced himself too soon, they could be on
the other bank, ditch the boat and get away, so
(12:46):
he had to let him get close enough that he
could at least identify them if they ran. He watched
him for ten or fifteen minutes as they got closer
and closer, going back and forth across that canal, gigging frogs.
When he thought they were getting close enough, he saw
that beam of lights surround the tree he was hiding behind.
He said he knew right then that they'd seen him,
(13:07):
and he went to step out from behind the tree
and try to get a look at their faces. As
he started moving around that tree, he saw a huge
bullfrog sitting in front of that tree he was hiding behind.
He said, it was like he was hunting over a decoy.
They had no clue he was there watching them, peeking
around that tree. He could see them all focused on
(13:28):
that frog as the light got closer and closer, and
he heard them talking back and forth about how big
it was. He could also see that the only visible
weapon they had in the open was the frog gig.
When they got right near the bank, and that gig
was only seconds away from sabbing that frog. He stuck
his arm around the tree and grabbed the frog gig,
(13:50):
snatched it out of the man's hand and simultaneously saying
game warders. He said it was the blood curdling squeal
of the man in the front that caused man in
the middle to drop the spylight and start screaming too.
They both started running out the back of the boat
and over top of the man in the back, who
started screaming, what is it? What is it? What is it?
(14:12):
He turned on his flashlight and hollered game warding again.
They stopped running through the waist deep water and mud
and crawled out on the bank where he was standing.
He said they was actually seemed to relieve that they
were only getting tickets and that a boogerman hadn't got them.
Oh lord, there's three legal ways to catch frogs in Arkansas,
(14:34):
and that's what I'm talking about. So y'all be sure
and check with your state laws and do what's right here.
If you're sixteen or older, you're going to have to
have a fishing license. In Texas you'll need a hunting license,
so wherever you are, make sure you get what you need.
In Arkansas, you can catch them with your hands, use
a gig or a spring loaded grabber attached to a pole,
(14:57):
or a bow and arrow, and the last way, be
it or not, is to fish for them. Now. Using
your hands is my least favorite for two reasons, and
those reasons are number one, I don't like poking my
hands in dark places where cotton mouse live. And number two,
I don't like poking my hands in dark places where
cotton mouse live. I got snake bit once, and I'll
(15:18):
tell you all that story another day. Another thing about
using your hands, you have to walk right up on
them or run the boat right up on them, and
sometimes you'll make a racket or hit a stob and
spook the frog, causing them to jump and get away,
even though you got him blinded with a light. I've
never used a bowl in ara, but that sounds like fun,
(15:40):
especially if I used archery equipment. I don't think I'd
to be slinging frog airs out of my compound. Probably
be a better idea to get you a traditional bowl
or recurve and do some instinctive shooting with a fishing era.
They're attached to your bowl with a real or by
a spool, and you can shoot them and then reel
them in. I can't think of a better way to
stay and practice for archery. It's sure beach standing in
(16:03):
the backyard shooting a styrofoam target that wouldn't taste good
even if a Harry Biker cooked it. Fishing for frogs
is an easy way to let everybody have a cracking
catch and supper. If you knew the frogging and you
haven't developed those long forgotten caveman skills the chunking spears,
let the frog catch himself. Just get you a long
(16:23):
cane pole or a jig pole, attach a few feet
of fishing line and tie cropper jig on it and
dangle it in front of that frog. Frogs are predators
and they'll eat just about anything. Once he bites it,
just pull him to you and drop him in the sack,
and then it's on to the next one. If I
got to making some notes and getting organized to talk
to you all about frog fishing, I found a whole
(16:46):
bunch of videos of folks catching frogs this way on
the interwebs forget walleye fishing, seth and Chester. The bullfrog
tournament trail is where it's at, plus no waiting frogs.
I've used the grabber before. It's a tension loaded apparatus
that folks gig fish with too. The proty using a
grabber is when you gig the frog, you're really just
(17:09):
catching him. The trigger hits that frog when you spear him,
and tension loaded springs collapse and the jaws of the
graver they come together and trap the frog instead of
poking new holes in him that he wasn't designed to
live with. Then you just drop him in the ice
chest or in your tosac and move on to the
next one. All your frogs stay fresh and you can
(17:29):
wait and clean them in the morning without any problem.
The cons he using a grabber, and my experience is
that joker will go off if you bump something in
the boat or hitt on limb at the worst possible time,
usually spooking your supper away. And fresh frogs are always
trying to get back from whence they came, and you'll
spend some of your time re catching the frogs that
(17:50):
hop out of the bag or the ice chest. I
like to catch my frogs once, and when I'm using
a gig. It ain't like I'm running a sword through
them and throwing them in the dungeon to slow to
meet their fate. That would be cruel and unnecessary. It's
just a frog, someone would say, Well, it may be,
but they're a creature we've been given dominion over to utilize, enjoy,
(18:11):
and respect, even if it is just a frog. When
I pull him off the gig, I give him a
good watch four on the knogging and by taking hold
of his legs and using the part of his head
where his hat would go for a hammer on the
side of the boat, wham and drop him in the bucket.
Now you got to mess the dead frogs, And if
you ain't planning on cleaning them when you get done,
(18:32):
you better have some ice ready to keep them good
and cold till you get ready to ject the breeches
off of them the next morning. That's easy too, and
I'm fixed to tell you how to do it. You
gonna need a dead bullfrog, any kind of kitchen shears,
a pair of plyers, and a pocket knife. You know
what kind of pocket knife. Grab your shears and cut
his feet off at the ankles. Then with your pocket knife,
(18:55):
cut a line across his back about even with the
armpits of his front leg. Take your plyers and grab
a hold of the skin as you just cut, and
take your other hand and grab him just above that cut,
using his front legs for leverage. Pull down with you plyers,
and just that easy off comes his breeches. Then I'll
(19:16):
take the shears and cut across where his back meets
his legs. You should have two legs ready for fry.
Some folks will separator or leave them together. What are
you preferred on mat? All right, somebody get the peet
up old to three hundred and twenty five degrees. We're
(19:37):
about to get busy cooking up our veentles. Buttermilk, egg
flyour salt and pepper. That's about his basic and he
gets and that's all you need to cook up a
mess that's really good food. I like to add a
little crawfish bowl and lemon pepper to my fly. I
talked about that batter mixture on the Catching Catfish with
Trotlines episode. If you ain't heard that one, you need
(20:00):
to get your ears over there on that one and
get to listening. Sometimes I'll go with two parts fired
to one part cornmeal if I'm feeling fancy, and I'll
use the same spices or a combination. There ain't no rules.
Just fix them the way you like them. But when
you fix them, holler at me when they're ready. A
basic way to make them is mix that egg up
(20:22):
in a bowl of buttermilk, dip the legs in there,
and then roll them in the flour that you've added
spices to and drop them into grease. You can double
up the dipping process legs and buttermilk, then in fly
back to buttermilk again, back in the fire to give
them that extra crust. Man, it's good if you deep
(20:42):
fry them. Well, you know how much oil you need
If you do it in a skillet, about a quarter
to a half inch is plenty. The best part of
this activity is it's one of many ways to introduce
children to the outdoors and the concept of being self reliant.
With your help, you can teach them that darkness can
be inviting and wonderful, filled with adventure and fun. I
(21:06):
hope y'all be inspired to get out with the little
folks and have fun. Schools out and when I was young,
and school being out meant that school was in with
my dad. There's a whole other world going on out
there at night, and it's responsibility of those of us
who are familiar with it to show those that ain't
how good it is. We value and look out for
(21:29):
the things we love, even if it is just a fraud.
This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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