Catching Smallmouth with my bro Joe Cortez was an absolute blast, but my real love is fishing for crappie. Being so far from my home waters in the Columbia Basin meant that I had to adjust my tactics for the I-82 ponds. Pond # 5 is an awesome panfish pond that is really underfished. Packing in my Caddis float tube for an evening of Crappie/Bluegill fishing meant a little leisure time away from the stresses of life. After riding my moutain bike from the pond 4 access, I portaged into pond 5 to make the most of the nearly perfect fishing conditions. My most productive search lure on this pond is a 2.5 " Berkley Gulp minnow in watermelon pearl color, but today it only caught me a couple of fish. The smaller Bluegill along the shaded west shore kept nipping off the tails of my gulp minnow, so I switched over to a Southern Pro crappie stinger in black/chartruse. This is one of my favorite plastic baits for crappie, yet after an hour with only two keeper crappie to show for my efforts, I swiched to a red chartruse micro jig tipped with a white berkley crappie nibble.( My friend Blufin Louie showed me how well the nibbles can produce) and on this night, they were what the crappie wanted! One stickup was loaded with suspended 9" plus crappie. I set my Thill Shybite bobber for 3 1/2 ft. and the bite was on! Between 7 and 8:30 p.m. I caught some 35 crappie plus a couple of bull Bluegill to 8.5 ". The best part was having the spot all to myself. If you know where to go, a guy can have a blast catching nice panfish on the I-82 ponds. For more info on where to go for crappie and panfish, feel free to call me @ 509-391-7224. The Jigmiester.

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