Monksville Recap

June 10th, 2012

blue skies, 80 degrees
Water Temperature 72.5 degrees
used medium sized flatheads

My alarm went off at 4:00 AM and I must really love fishing because I pulled myself out of bed to head to the Monksville Reservoir.  On a recommendation, I checked out Frank's Tackle in Wanaque, NJ.  Frank's Tackle was clean, well stocked and organized ... a real nice tackle shop.  The gentlemen who came in the morning gave me a gloomy forecast for catching walleye in Monksville.  He recommended Greenwood Lake as a better prospect for catching walleye.  Nonetheless,  I headed out for Monksville and got my kayak in the water by t 6:00 AM.  It was beautiful ... and deep from the South Boat launch!  

I first headed towards target area (A), but I ended up on the on the other side of the rounded point (slightly uplake from target area (A).  It was a nice solid bottom and I found some structure in 7 and 14 foot of water.  I bounced the bottom with a lindy rig and a flathead minnow and had a hookup right away.  The fish (did not get a good visual) jumped out of the water and shook the hook out.  I changed back to a bobber and minnow and eventually drifted to the other side of the rounded point and into target area (A).  There were more weeds and vegetation in target area (A), but there were so many big and medium size rocks, that I definitely want to come back here again.  I got halfway past the rounded point in the direction of the inlet when I hooked up this giant 6 pound rock bass!  It was actually much, much smaller but my bodaciously awesome photography skillz made it look so much bigger!

As I went into the inlet, I kept seeing these large abandoned spawning nest up on the shore.  I tried to take a   picture (below), but they are hard to see in the the top of the photograph.  They look like giant dark circles.  They were not abandoned that long ago.  The day was getting slow and I only had about 5 minnows left, so I wanted to check out target area (B) just for a bit.

Area (B) would be an ideal walleye location.  The drop off is significant from shore and having viewed the slope above the shoreline led me to believe there were lots more rocks below the shore line. Immediately, my Eagle 360c fish finder told me there were a school of fish hugging the bottom around 25 feet.  I think these could have been walleye so I setup up my second rod with a lindy rig (again).  It didn't take me long to get snagged on the bottom and it took even less time for me to break my pole.  Let me be honest, this was only a $20.00 pole from Wal-Mart, so I was not surprised.  I decided to fish the shoreline again and saw a couple of low-cut tree stumps.  It did not take me long to realize those trees were chopped down and the rest of the trees were the structure I was seeing at 25 feet of water ... and most likely what I was getting snagged on.  I did catch another rock bass, but then called it a day at 10:30.