Clockwise, from top left: minnow, crayfish, sunfish, shad, frog, and grasshopper. Fathead minnows, leeches and worms are mainstays in bait-shop refrigerators across the country. These old standards ...

Every topwater strike makes bass fishing more fun. But there’s something about topwater frog fishing—watching that almost comical-looking bait hop and sputter and then get suddenly obliterated—that ...