Product Review: Matzuo Nano Kroaker Frog

Company Description:  The Matzuo Nano Kroaker Frog is the perfect floating bait for hard to reach bass.  Fish this bait in lily pads, timber or any other heavy cover.  The cupped mouth spits a large plume of water when popped. Offered in a variety of realistic finishes for nearly all conditions.  This floating frog bait is a true trophy producer!

Features Benefits:  The Nano Kroaker Frog has a cupped mouth for better popping action as well as multi-strand legs and duel weedless black nickel Matzuo hooks. The Nano frog comes in both 2 inch (1/4 oz.)  and 3.5 inch (5/8 oz) sizes to fit your desires.  Finally the Nano Kroaker has a small disk at the base of the frogs body which weighs the rear end down for longer cast as well as keeps the rear portion of the bait below the head for a more realistic action on retrieval.

Review:  Initially I fished this bait as is out of the box with no alterations.  To say the least  I was initially very happy with the bait as on the first cast a small 12 inch bass exploded from under some lily pads and inhaled it.

Honestly this was the case pretty often however what I learned pretty quickly was that this bait suffered

from the same issues as many of the other hollow bodied frogs.  First, the legs out of the packaging are far too long as a result when a fish took it out on open water many times the fish would grab the legs and pull it under on short strikes.  This ultimately resulted in more missed fish than I would've liked.

The second problem I noticed was that they hooks are bent in too deeply which didn't really make much of a difference with smaller bass that took the bait.  However whenever I set the hook on larger bass because of the sharp bend on the hooks often I'd pull the bait out of the fishes mouth not getting a good hook set.  That's not to say that the hooks aren't sharp, in fact the hooks are very nice especially given the lower price point of the Nano Kroaker Frog.

Lastly one unique thing that happens with this frog, not sure if I want to call it a problem just yet, is that due to the weighted disc in the rear of the body this frog sinks below the surface.  While this flaw is something I'm sure the people at Matzuo didn't intend to have it actually didn't stop bass from attacking
this bait.  In fact I've caught at least ten bass that attacked this frog while it was swimming below the surface.  Overall I give this bait a 4 stars because of the lack of floating and minor tuning issues out of the package and the fact that the cupped mouth really doesn't add much popping sound to the retrieve.

Pros:  The best thing about this frog is that when fish are not really interested in eating bigger frogs the Nano Kroaker Frog draws them through the muck.  As well with the weighted disk in the rear of the bait it imparts a great life like action with the flick of a wrist.

Cons:  First the legs, like on other frogs on the market, are too long out of the package which often leads to missed fish because they grab the legs rather than the body of the bait.  As well the nickel hooks are angled too deeply over the body which has led to several lost larger bass due to inability to set the hook.  Lastly the same weighted disk which aids in casting and imparts great action, causes the bait to sink rather than float as designed. 

Price:  $3.49 - $3.99

Product Review: Matzuo Nano Minnow

Description: The matzuo Nano Minnow offers anglers the perfect downsized lure for those heavily fished waters where finicky fish prefer bite-sized baits.  The tight swimming action of theses lures resembles a fleeing minnow.  These versatile mini baits trigger powerful strikes from trout, bass, crappie and all other panfish.  These tiny floating lures are sure to become favorites among ultralight fishermen fishing tiny brooks and streams to larger ponds and lakes.

Additional Features include:

-Bright, prismatic finishes
-Durable Contoured Bodies
-Matzuo black chrome treble hooks with stainless steel split rings
-Realistic 3-D eyes
-Floating Lures Dive to 3 ft.
-Comes in sizes 2” and 2 ½”

Review:  This bait is great and will definitely be a permanent addition to my bait box.  (The color I used while fishing is the shiner pattern) The bait dives to between 3 and 4 feet when retrieved steadily.  But what is great and actually stimulated a few strikes for me is that the nano minnow suspends at that depth when you stop your retrieval.  Additionally the nano minnow has great action when being retrieved.  The bait wobbles and swerves  a bit erratically which fish can't resist.  I've seen both largemouth and crappy chase this bait down from behind structure. Over the course of two days of continual usage I caught 12 largemouth, 1 smallmouth, 15 white bass and 5 crappy. 

How I used:  I fished the nano minnow behind an ultra-light rod and a Quantum Optix 30 reel on 8lb line.  The flaw with this set up is that the line was a bit too heavy for the set up so I couldn't cast as far as I wanted with such a light crank bait.  In the future I'll be using the same rod but will switch out to a smaller reel with 4lb or 6lb line. 

Pros:  This bait catches anything and everything.

Cons: The bait job looks great but has started to come off a bit after using it.  As well because it is such a small bait even a small piece of grass attached to the hooks causes the bait to lose its action.  

Price: $3.99

Thanks for reading

Kwan