I live in Toms River and would be glad to give you my .02. Try the local ponds, like any place you'll see that some places produce and some dont. You'll get the usual suspects of pickerel and bass, sunfish, catfish/carp, and possibly crappie. I personally at first fished shiners, night-crawlers under a bobber to see if theres a population and from then I would start chucking artificials. You will just have to cover a lot of water and essentially deduce which lakes are worth hitting. You can find a lot of places here and shorten the learning curve here:
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/fishplc.htm
You will hear a lot about the species diversity, nice deep, COLDWATER lakes up in Northern Jersey and you have to accept that Southern Jersey is not like that. I like taking the 1.5 hour ride north with my boat but I've found that I may as well travel just 30 minutes to catch the same skunk closer to home than half the state away
. This article is an interesting read about some southern NJ lakes for bass fishing.
http://www.gameandfishmag.com/fishin...ng_at_0506_02/
It took me a year or two to find out some of the local honey holes. Just do some research and learn as much as you can between forums like these, online articles, and old salts from bait shops. PM at anytime for info- I don't know as much about your area exactly but would be glad to share any specifics that I know. Tight lines!
