Inside the Belly of a Frog

In the name of science, and bringing back memories of high school biology class, I pulled out the Exact-O knife and went to work dissecting a frog last night. Not to worry, as no creatures were truly hurt as a result of my efforts. The patient in this case was one of my $9.00 SPRO Bronze-eye frogs. This one had served me well over the past couple years, finally getting torn up enough to make patching and repair almost an impossibility. So I thought it might serve a greater purpose to open it up and see what makes it tick.

It is really a simple little organism. A nice Gamakatsu frog hook with a soldered swivel/link creates the guts of the frog. The hook runs through a small hole in the belly ahead of the weight to get the right angle. On my frog it is this little hole that got ripped open more than an inch toward the mouth that was its final undoing. The legs are created from a single set of living rubber strands run through both leg openings and secured in the middle via a tight knot. This probably serves two purposes, one to keep all the leg strands even and together, the other being a centered mass that sits between the hole openings and acts again as a stabilizer to the legs being yanked out of whack. It would take some great effort to pull that knot through the tiny leg openings. My legs had been trimmed to an overall length of 6" including the knot. Out of the package they are probably more along the lines of 8", knot included. Mine was composed of approximately 20 strands of material.

The weight in the frog is actually a grommet weight that has a nice slot running around its circumference that the edge of the rubber hole fits into. On my frog, the plastic was thinner in this area, probably to snug into the groove better, and was also attached (almost melted) to the weight. My first attempt to remove the weight resulted in a slight tearing of the plastic with a little bit left attached to the weight. This could pose a problem for anyone wanting to remove the weight to make modifications to the frog.

As for modifications, I know a few potent frog sticks that customize their SPRO's as well as their other frogs to get unique attributes. I've also seen queries on message boards about replacing legs that were either cut too short or had been ripped up. It seems like you have a couple ways of attacking the mod issue. One is to carefully remove the belly weight and use this larger opening as a way to access the frog internals. As mentioned though, it will be a delicate operation if your plastic is sticking to the weight. You'll also have to play a little with getting the weight back into place correctly. That said, going through the belly lets you do things like insert rattles or BB's for added noise. It would also let you cut out and remove the knotted section of the legs, thereby easing the removal of the existing strands without tearing the leg openings.

As for threading in new legs of whatever color combinations or lengths you'd want, that could be accomplished easiest by using newly cut living rubber strands that haven't had their strands individually separated yet. Just clump or layer whatever color combinations you want together before tieing off in the center. You might be able to get away without tieing the knot, though I'd have to try first to know for sure. As for threading, use a piece of lighter weight braided line that gets threaded through the leg hole and then tied with a sliding (slip) knot. Put the very end of the living rubber strands into the slip knot and then cinch down tight. Then pull the ends of the living rubber strips through the leg openings. You can try to pull straight through both sets of leg openings from one side to the other, or use two strings, one through each leg opening and attached to each end of the living rubber. The latter works if you have removed the belly weight as mentioned earlier. I'd stick to the 20 strands as in the stock frog as I'm not sure you could squeeze more through the openings without tearing. Of course, doing fewer for a less sparse set of legs would be an easy mod.