I've spent a TON of hours at Monksville after dark and will tell you that it is a tough nut to crack. My trips were focused on Walleye and there have only been a handful of fish landed by my small group of friends who fish it. For some reason we all keep going back though
. The place does go crazy at night, with bait and predator fish popping all over. My best luck at night there has been with Smallies. While doing the Walleye thing there a few years ago, we realized the Smallies would crush the floating Rapalas as well. Slow retrieval near the weed lines worked for us. Find submerged rocks
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Lately though I have been catching Walleye at LH and GWL on floating lures. For reasons I still don't fully understand, I will be hitting Monksville this week to see for the 3000th time to see if the same techniques/patterns/spots will work there. Usually they don't, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while lol. Try using the floating Rapala in the F18 size. Yes, its large, but the Walleye love them this time of year. Given Monksville has a ridiculous Alewife Herring population, I would also try a livelined herring and/or a herring on a slip bobber set-up.
Once the spawn ends, the Largemouth will usually crush weedless frogs deep in the slop. We've picked them up on black Scumfrogs.
Don't give up on Monksville...but definetly give Greenwood and Hopatcong a shot as well.
