Local waters have warmed up nicely. Most temps are 68 to 70 degrees, and with some of the warmer days this has triggered the fishing activity. Lots of baitfish, small fry, perch, and catfish can been seen moving around the water column. Big fish cruising the shallows and the flats. Bass are now entering the post spawn and are staying close to cover, mostly submerge logs. A variety of soft plastics like a zoom curly tail worm, or zoom straight tail worm in any neutral color works well. (Junebug, watermellon, or pumpkin colors) Also a rapala x-rap small size in silver or green works well when thrown into cover. There have been some nice bass coming off the beds earlier in the month, most in the 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 lb range. Real nice healthy fish and they showed no signs of being beaten up during the spawn. Catch and release is still in force until June 15th. So any bass largemouth or smallmouth must be returned un-harmed to the water. Weeds are beginning to grow and fish will move into them by beginning of June. This will be the start of the summer fishing pattern and from sign of local lakes, it should be a good one. For those of you NJ residents fishing Splitrock, beware of the big black bear roaming the island, give hin/her some space. Go to www.thepondhopper.com to see some of the recent pictures in the photo gallery. I still have a couple of weekend dates open for June, which promises to be a great month. Happy fishing to all and we'll see you out on the water.

Dino C The Pond Hopper