Anyone fish any small ponds in Jersey from the bank recently with much luck? I'm in Union county, and hit a couple small ponds with no luck what so ever. I slow rolled a spinnerbait and didn't get a touch, and than I tried hopping/crawling a jig w/chunk trailer and no luck. Water felt really cold.... I'm guessing from all the snow runoff we had lately.

I'm in Ocean County and I hit a local pond Sunday. I was throwing everything I had for about 4 hours then as the sun started to fall around 4:30pm I threw a 4" gold shiner walk the dog & it was like the switch turned on! I ended up catching about 4 smaller Bass & 8 decent Pickeril, I went back tuesday at the same time with the same lure & I got a bunch of bites, but only landed 1 pickeril, a good 28" fish. That one fish put me onto what was going on, I foul hooked it by the tail, so I think most of the blow ups I was getting were tail swats. Also, all the fish I caught were up against a 2' dropoff along the bank.

28 inch pickeral?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? thats almost state record status im sure.

We catch some big Pickeral some of the lakes around Ocean County. I never wanna kill em so I always just shake em off the hook. A couple years ago my buddy caught what was for sure a state record Redfin Pickeral but let em go cause we didnt wanna kill it & we didnt want to attract any more attention to the lake which produces bass 6lbs & up and is already really pressured.