Sussex County (Sparta) Fishing

[briansnat]

1. There are many well known places so I see no reason to act as if they are state secrets. Within a short drive of Sparta you have Hopatcong, Lake Musconetcong, Cranberry Lake, the Swartswood lakes and Lake Jefferson among others

Drive a little farther and there are places such as Green Turtle Pond, Monksville, Sheppards Lake, Wawayanda. Split Rock, Pompton Lake and the Newark watershed reservoirs (permit required).

And even farther, Round Valley, Merrill Creek, Spruce Run are popular waters to fish. You can car top to any of those. All have good fishing.

2. This shows you many of the more popular lakes and whether or not they have car top launches and /or ramps and the type of fish you can expect.

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/pdf/2003/plcpnds03.pdf

3. I haven't fished specifically for carp in probably 40 years, but corn always worked for me back then. Pickerel and pike you'll often find the same places as bass. Edges of weeds, alongside or under down trees and stumps, hanging where the shallows drop off into deeper water. I throw plastics about 80 percent of the time. Texas rig, Carolina rig, drop shot and unweighted, hooked wacky or T-rig style. if you don't know these rigs, check Youtube.

Topwater plugs such as Devil Horse,Skitterpops, jitterbugs, poppers, Heddon Torpedoes, Rebel Frog-R, Zara Spooks, etc can be productive in the shallows as are most of the many frog imitations. It's also hard to go wrong with Rapalas.

There are just too many lures and methods to go into detail, jigs, spinners, spoons, spinnerbaits, crankbaits, buzzbaits, swimbaits, and gazillion kinds of plastics such as creatures, brush hogs, flukes, tubes, stickbaits, worms, frogs, lizards, you name it. Just play around with them and see what rigs, baits and methods work for you. It's hard to go wrong with a Senko no matter how you fish it.

I never fish specifically for crappy. They don't give much of a fight, but when I do catch them it's usually while I'm trolling for trout in the spring. I'm never targeted salmon but I suspect they'd generally hang out where the trout are.