
Tips for hunting that lower Garden State personal best in 2025.
Thomas Wyatt lives in Mystic Island in Little Egg Harbor Township and prefers fishing for largemouth bass. He told me “the perks of living in a shore town” include easy access to The Fisherman on newsstands, so you might think he would fish the salt instead. Wyatt told me “you can’t get lost” in the salt as you can when seeking the solitude of fishing freshwater.
Saltwater anglers have something to learn from a guy who lives where they fish but slips out the back door, because recharging batteries after fishing among other people is not a bad idea. The peace and quiet of bass fishing a South Jersey lake can serve as complementary experience.
Wyatt will fish in February when he gets the chance if the weather’s mild, but once March comes, he begins fishing from shore about 3 or 4 hours a day, three days a week. Throwing fish imitations like bladebaits, spinnerbaits, and chatterbaits, he sometimes switches out for a plastic worm, weightless besides the inset hook. “I’ll throw a worm all year ‘round,” he told me.
He said of his favorite lakes during the early season, “I’ve been fishing here 30 years. I know every inch of those lakes. I know where the channels are, where the holes are. I’m targeting the deeper water, the channels. A lot of these lakes have dams, and the channels run right up to the dams.” He also fishes flowing water, hitting “the tributaries of the Mullica River and the Delaware River in the early season.” Near the Mullica, “Two beaver dams make two lakes I fish from the banks, and when you find the bass, they’re piled up.”

Cool Hot Spots
The Cooper River is a Delaware River tributary flowing into Camden. Here Wyatt finds the deepest water he fishes in South Jersey. The 30-foot depths also harbor walleyes sometimes weighing 9 pounds. Besides Union Lake in Gloucester County, which has greater depth, the South Jersey lakes are 12 feet deep at most. He’s fished Ocean, Atlantic, Burlington, and Salem counties in addition to Gloucester and Camden, but he’s most at home in Ocean, Atlantic, and Burlington counties. On average, the lakes are about a hundred acres, the smallest 40. “I look for smaller boat ramps, dirt ramps, carry-in lakes,” Wyatt said of his exploration, adding “I fish big lakes with big boat ramps, but I seem to do better in carry-in lakes. They don’t get as much pressure.”
In general, South Jersey is the Valhalla of shallow water. About “half the lakes are tannic, half clear water,” noted Wyatt, adding “The majority of the deep water is probably around 6 foot. Most of my fishing is done in probably 3-foot of water or less.”
Not only do South Jersey lakes warm sooner in the spring than New Jersey’s highlands lakes and reservoirs, they’re easier to fish. So if you’re primarily a saltwater angler, hopes might be met in short order by comparison to fishing up north. Wyatt has persistently fished Round Valley, Monksville, and Merrill Creek reservoirs, as well as Lake Hopatcong. He’s impressed me as better qualified than anyone else to judge the waters of my region as harder to fish than those down below. The difference owes itself to depth and acreage.
In the waters northward, Wyatt said “the fish have a lot of places to go, and a lot of places to hide. Those bigger lakes, you need a lot more time and a lot more effort. Or you need to know somebody to let you know where the fish are.”

Just Warming Up
By the end of May, a strong clue to the whereabouts of bass down south are recently emerged weedbeds. Wyatt accesses them by kayak, unless he’s out with a guest in his flat-bottomed boat. “A lot of these lakes have it all,” Wyatt said, describing locations rich with eel grass, milfoil and pads. “A lot of guys don’t like fishing the slop,” said Wyatt, adding “I tell people all the time. I say, if I don’t have to reel my line in and pick grass off every time I cast, I don’t really want to be fishing there. I feel like the bass go in there and cool off.”
Wyatt selects topwater plugs and weedless frogs as good options, as well as the worm and inset hook. “The Bigfoot Frog is one of my favorites. I fish Horney Toads. I like medium to bigger baits. The smallest I’ll fish is probably 3 inches, and the biggest is 6, 7 inches. I think the bigger bass are lazy, and they’re looking for a bigger, easier meal,” Wyatt said.
The middle of June may already be summer’s Dog Days. Severe heat like last year’s makes the whole environment seem thick as molasses. “I do a lot of slow fishing,” Wyatt said. “I was never the type to put in a boat, put a trolling motor down, and zip along the bank and cast and cast. I like anchoring up. Like I tell people all the time, an anchor and polarized sunglasses are my two best friends, because I like to pick spots apart. Sometimes it takes me six, seven, eight casts to hook a bass.” And given weeds and shallow water, it’s not surprising Wyatt uses a paddle, not a pedal, kayak.
Not all the summer fishing is slow, though. Mike Bucca’s segmented swimbaits work when bass become active at day’s end. “I reel them fast across the top so they wake. I get a lot of good fish that way and with the Whopper Plopper. I like to throw 6-inch wake baits. When the weather’s hot, right at sunset, I’ll throw those big bluegill imitations, right on top. And the wake baits.”

Bass Chasing Bait
Not everything about South Jersey lakes amounts to weeds. Wyatt’s mentioned holes, channels, and dams. But he told me there are laydowns, and even docks on some of the lakes, each of which might become especially productive as weeds begin to recede towards the end of October.
During fall, Wyatt tries “to imitate bait.” He uses Keitechs, Scottsboro Yum Swimbaits, paddletail swimbaits, Zoom Flukes. I took pleasure in his suggesting the fall forage shift’s universality. The same lures will work to the north but without the show bass put on for Wyatt. “I’ve got those polarized glasses on, and I’m looking for fish,” said Wyatt, while adding “Sometimes it’s a long weed edge; sometimes it’s along channel edges. I’m looking for the fish that are schooled up.”
Many of the waters are clear to the bottom, and Wyatt’s not always fishing when he’s on them. “Sometimes I won’t even cast. I have my rod with me, and I’ll paddle around and just watch, looking and seeing what’s going on underneath. It’s like my own big aquarium,” he noted. Gaining deep familiarity with a lake can make intuitive judgement sharp when it comes to casting, and during mild weather periods after weeds recede, bass have fewer places to hide. Leaves in the water can be a problem, but given the shallow depths, bass can be spotted.
Many of us would like to fish three, sometimes five days a week as Wyatt does, but we have other commitments. And some of us don’t have the motivation. Wyatt began fishing at age 12, his parents having divorced, and his mother alcoholic. “I would go fishing all day. Just disappear all day, and that’s what I did,” recalled Wyatt. “It became my favorite thing to do, and it just stuck with me. I never stopped, and it kept getting stronger and stronger, and now sometimes I’m out five days a week, a couple hours out of the day. Even on days when I got something to do, I’ll stop somewhere for a half hour,” he added.
I told Wyatt I used to fish short stints of a half-hour, maybe 45 minutes. Lunch breaks from work sometimes allowed a couple hours, but I usually had less time. Wyatt feels the same way I do, that if a half hour is the limit, it’s worthwhile. Sometimes I’ll check on an ailing pond in my neighborhood for a short while to see if the bass have come back. All of us who fish seriously, we develop various habits to make the best of our time as we try to improve catches.
Wyatt is an example of unusual achievement. I’ve pointed out some of where he fishes up north, but he also fishes the salt on occasion, especially for fluke. I clammed near the Great Bay fish factory 40 years ago when it was old and falling apart. I’m glad to hear it’s still there, mostly. Wyatt also does well for smallmouth on the North Branch and South Branch Raritan rivers. He travels to the Saint Lawrence River for smallmouth every year, catching some giants, and he fishes the Susquehanna a few times a year. His life is devoted to fishing, the way my life is devoted to writing. When for 13 years I made my living clamming the bays behind Long Beach Island, I wrote daily with a fierce passion, provoked by living in a state of nature.
Numerical results exemplify any great achievement. This past year, Wyatt caught more than 40 largemouths in South Jersey over 4 pounds, weighed on a scale he frequently checks by using 3. 5, 7.5, and 10-pound weights. During my LBI years, I filled more than a hundred college-ruled, full-sized notebooks with words. It’s tough to catch true lunkers. Nor do the best ideas appear on every page. “I only broke 5 pounds once,” Wyatt noted, adding “I usually break it two or three times (each year). My biggest was 5-2. I’ll usually catch seven, eight bass (a day), three of them 3 pounds or bigger.”
Wyatt shows us South Jersey is worth effort. If you have a kayak to fish from, you’re set. If not, you can fish from the bank. Or you can use a boat on plenty of lakes.