Giggin’ Frogs in the Everglades
A couple of things I learned gigging frogs for the first time. I knew this was a night time activity since frogs are more active at night and certainly less skittish as opposed to day light hours. The moon or rather the lack thereof has a lot do with your success. On our night the moon didn’t rise till about 11:00pm so from darkness which was about 9:00 we had two hours to get our best frogging in. Once the moon came up the bigger frogs disappeared and the ones that did stick around were much more skittish and took off before we could get close enough to gig them. Our guide, Capt. Tim Davis, said his best nights are when the moon sets early and from about 2:00 am to 6:00 am till just before first light starts to illuminate the horizon are his best nights with the biggest frogs. We harvested about 70-frogs which if we had been better skilled could easily have been 300 since we missed most of what we tried to gig. Our success was about 1-frog for every five we came across though we got much better at gigging as the night went on. Remember, we were using 14-foot gigging poles moving about 5-to 7-miles per hour trying to hit something the size of a donut hole meaning we had to aim for the body of the frog as opposed to the exposed head. Hitting the frog in his bony head resulted in a miss. If you want to go gigging for frogs in the Everglades just 25-minutes from downtown Fort Lauderdale contact Capt. Tim Davis on his website www.gladesmanoutfitters.com