Boys’ night out takes on a new meaning on a St. John’s River slough.
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It started as an early evening, warm-weather bass fishing trip. My sons and I lowered the skiff from our St. Johns River dock, cranked the engine and eased away into the swirling, falling water as the last 30 minutes of day gave way to night.
The plan was to cast around docks, working topwater plugs near pilings and the fringes of lights illuminating the water. It turned out to be a good idea, and we caught several fish, but as we ran our skiff up a large feeder creek off the river, my oldest son Eric panned our navigational spotlight along an undeveloped shoreline and noticed something that would distract us from our angling.
“Man look at all those eyes; must be a dozen gators hanging against that bank,” he shouted over the purr of the outboard. “That’s sure no place to go for a swim.”
The light reflected a lot of bright eyes along shore. The tide was low, and it dawned on me that the eyes were well above the water. I backed the skiff off plane, and turned toward the bank at idle speed.
“Let’s get a closer look at those gators,” I told the boys. Thirty yards from the bank we did, indeed, spot a couple 4-foot alligators, and they sounded as we approached. But the many glowing eyes closer to shore remained fixed. The spotlight soon revealed they were frogs, not gators.
“Man, I wish we’d put the frog gigs in the boat,” Matt, my youngest son, said. “It’s been awhile since we brought home fresh frog legs for dinner.”
The seed was thus planted for a night of tidewater frog gigging. So I turned the boat, ran back to our dock, and quickly went to the house, returning with a pair of frog gigs. In less than an hour we were back in the creek, ready for a go at frogs.
We stealthily maneuvered around mid-creek brushpiles and lily pads, beneath an old highway bridge, and finally into a narrow, deep portion of the creek, surrounded by an undeveloped cypress swamp far from the main river. Away from crowds and marinas, houses and blaring car horns, my son Eric manned the 12-volt spotlight, illuminating the swamp for hundreds of yards. Matt moved to the bow, sitting carefully with a long canepole with a gig attached, safely held half in and half out of the boat. The skiff moved quietly along, powered by an electric motor. The bright light shone far out in front, and Eric swept it back and forth in an effort to see the surface of the water and the nearby swamp banks. Sleeping herons flushed from the shallows, and a hen wood duck with her brood fast-kicked away from the intruders. Two hunting raccoons stared into the light, then ignored it and went back to their business of foraging.
Finally, we spotted a pair of red eyes 70 yards out. The boat closed fast, and we tensed in silent anticipation.
“Oh, it’s jus’ a ’gator,” one of the boys said disappointedly as a 5-foot reptile glided, then dove as we neared. “Dang! I thought it was a big ol’ bullfrog.”
“Yeah, but there are more eyes over there,” Eric said excitedly while panning the light to several small pairs of white eyes on shore.
I quickly turned the boat and kicked the motor on high. As we neared one target, I slowed the skiff. The night was as quiet as a church at sunrise. Thirty feet from the eyes our beam highlighted a plate-size bullfrog, head broad as a man’s open hand, body black-green as swamp muck. It sat between two oil can-size cypress knees, with its back protected by a solid cypress trunk.
Running the stern-mount electric motor, I moved the boat just enough to barely close the distance between Matt at the bow, and the bullfrog on the bank. Twenty feet from the frog, Matt knelt intently, poised to strike like a lineman ready for the snap. Matt’s canepole was held tightly in both hands, eyes focused on his target. Suddenly he jabbed with the pole, but the frog was faster, and the deadly four-prong metal gig buried with a shuddering thud in solid cypress. “Quick! There’s another frog to the left of the tree, hurry, get ’im before he spooks…hurry!” Eric shouted.
“I’m tryin’,” barked Matt as he struggled awkwardly to pull the barbs from soft wood.
“Too late, he’s gone,” I said from the stern, not hiding my amusement at the boys’ excitement, and Matt’s missed opportunity. “That ol’ bullfrog you missed was big enough to feed half the family. At this rate, though, we might have to eat chicken instead. Maybe you guys should run the boat and let me try the gig.”
“Yeah, right, I’m sure you can do better,” the boys chimed in sarcastically, then they laughed and I traded places with Matt, but fared only marginally better. I went one for three on frogs, before Eric took a turn.
Frog legs fried golden brown.
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At midnight we headed home. There were two-dozen “kickers” in the cooler, a respectable take, but only 30 percent of the amphibians we spotted and stalked from the boat. But the night was a rousing success just the same, an exciting after-hours journey into a dark, ominous, watery world too few Florida outdoorsmen venture into these days.
All frog gigging is fun, especially in Florida with its multitude of lakes and rivers, backwater sloughs and swamps full of the good-eating amphibians. But I doubt there is a better way of collecting frogs than going during ebbing water on one of the state’s numerous tidewater rivers. The reason is remarkably simple, something I learned years ago from an old Jacksonville fireman friend, Donald Denmark.
On falling water, Denmark observed that frogs get confused and become especially vulnerable. They want to stay at the water’s edge where it’s safe. But when tidewater drops several feet from a bank, frogs know they’re exposed if they move with the water from shoreline cover. Yet they don’t hold tight against cypress knees and bank brush either at low tide—like they do during high tide.
“When the water ebbs, frogs really don’t know where they want to be,” said Denmark, “so they kind of stay in between shoreline cover and the water’s edge. In tidewater creeks that means they sort of ‘hang up’ on mud banks a couple feet wide, out i
n the wide open. That makes ’em easy to spot at night with a floodlight on bare creek mud, so it’s much easier to successfully gig ’em.”
Denmark gigs frogs all around the St. Johns River, and said it’s great in just about every feeder creek, many right in downtown Jacksonville.
“I’ve gigged frogs all my life, and love it ’bout as much as anything I do outdoors,” he said. “You get a lot of weird looks in the early evening from water-skiers and fishermen as you’re launching a boat or canoe while they’re putting their boats back on the trailers. But that’s much of the fun of gigging—almost no one else is around. You see and hear animals and critters you rarely spot during the day.
“And in summer, it’s nice and cool at night. You don’t have to fight that broiling summer sun, and frogs are usually thicker than fire ants in a Florida cow pasture.”
All a frog-gigger needs is a flashlight (hand-held or miner’s type that secures to the head/cap), a gig, burlap sack or cooler to store the catch, and maybe a bit of insect repellent. You don’t even need a boat. In fact, some tidewater giggers simply don rubber boots and walk along shore. That’s not my style, however, because there are water moccasins in the creeks, and they’re out feeding on frogs, too. Plus many tidewater creeks are gumbo muddy, making walking difficult. A small boat or canoe is a better way to go.
I spend most of my froggin’ time in the tidal reaches of the St. Johns River (from Jacksonville to Lake George) because it’s convenient. The best gigging is in deep, narrow creeks that have undeveloped shorelines with exposed mud bars at low tide. Broad parts of the St. Johns itself generally are not as good for frogging as feeder creeks because the wide, shallow flats near shore make it difficult to pinpoint and get to frogs. In the major tidal creeks off the St. Johns, however, conditions are perfect for ebb-water frogging.
I know giggers who successfully ply other tidal rivers in the state, like the lower St. Marys and Nassau. East coast rivers have more of a tide differential than Gulf Coast rivers, plus two low tides per 24-hour period. This makes Atlantic rivers generally better for ebb tide gigging. But there’s good gigging on Florida’s west coast, too, especially in the bigger tidewater rivers like the Steinhatchee and Suwannee. Same low-water conditions are desirable, with the full and new moon phases best because of very low tides.
Water depth is so important to good tidewater frog gigging that I don’t even bother going if the water isn’t plenty low. When onshore wind holds up the falling tide, keeping river and creek water high against the bank, gigging trips are scrubbed. When tidewater banks are flooded high, frogs are so far up in shoreline cypress knees and brush they’re almost impossible to see, and tougher still to gig successfully. In my experience you’ll see 10 to 20 times more frogs during ebb tides compared to flood tides.
Shallow-draft boats are best for ebb tide frogging, since they allow giggers to get into backwaters where kickers are abundant and people scarce. Johnboats and canoes are ideal, and many bass boat owners spend time gigging the shallows. Flats skiffs work well, too. Given the choice, though, I like large, stable johnboats because they’re rugged and take the muddy gigging abuse. Stern-mounted electric motors are best for frogging; the idea is to quietly push the bow into the shallows to allow close-quarters gigging for the person perched up front.
Gigging frogs takes deft hand-eye coordination, and teamwork between the man running the boat and the gigger. A good approach is to position the bow square to a frog and bump the trolling motor in forward. It’s vital to minimize boat noise and movement to keep from spooking a targeted amphibian. The man with the gig should be perched at the bow, gig extended, and hold perfectly motionless until he can make one quick jab to barb the target. It helps to have a third person hold a flashlight or spotlight on the frog—without motion—as the boat is moved into gigging position.
Inexpensive, commercially made metal frog gig heads are available in most sporting goods stores and many tackle shops. They’re typically made of metal, have from three to five barbed prongs, and readily attach to a wooden rod or canepole with a screw and nut. Wrap the whole connection with sturdy duct or electrician’s tape. Pole length is important, since the longer the pole the farther from the gigger a frog can be stabbed, which is good for not spooking the oft-wary amphibians. Most giggers prefer lightweight poles six to eight feet long, and many veterans use discarded wooden broom handles.
A good rule for safety sake is to only have one person gigging from a boat at a time. Also, gigs should be stowed safely when running in a boat. A rod locker is a good place. At the very least, put something solid over the prongs, like a block of thick foam rubber. Then put the gig pole out of harm’s way, for instance in a vertical rod holder.
In my experience, bullfrogs and leopard frogs are the most common targets in tidewater. While there is no size or bag limits on taking such frogs with gigs in Florida, we never take more than we want to clean and cook, and we’re certain only to gig good-size frogs to en-sure plenty remain for future trips. No license is needed for frog gigging, either, at least for sportsmen doing it non-commercially.
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