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The I 82 ponds have been playing Jeckel and Hyde with me lately with either very productive trips or very poor fishing for a number of my friends. The Crappie have been proving elusive for many even though it is peak time for them to be moving shallow. This report was focused on an area along the I 82 corridor called The Byron Ponds near Prosser. This series of sloughs has been productive in the past and when the fish are biting, it can bean awesome place for me to field test my custom made crappie jigs. The main drawback to these ponds is that any time it is warm and you get near russian olives there are a lot of ticks, so i had to check myself after I got back to my rig. Still it was well worth the effort. The crappie and sunfish were suspended and I was able to make long, wind assisted casts with a 1.75" Crappie Midget jig set at 2 1/2 feet on a cigar shaped stick bobber. When the fish started biting I put 22 on the bank in less than a 1/2 hour. The biggest fish went just over 9". My best color was a watermelon red flake Crappie Midget with a chartruse tail on a 1/32 oz Northland lure black jighead with a yellow eye. My Crappie Midget creation has been my hottest selling bait this spring and guys are ordering them from me daily. I want to hit the peak of the crappie spawn over the next few weeks. Hope to see more of you crappie addicts on the water! Jiggy

fishinChristian

5/6/2013 7:33:00 PM

So, make the report useful. Any ticks?

I also found one recently, so yeah they are out.

fishinChristian

5/7/2013 8:43:00 AM

And by the way, the report is useful on its own. The I82's have been real hit or miss, all or nothing.

tluedeke

5/7/2013 6:02:00 PM

That is completely bizarre - I'd never known there were any bodies of water back there. In fact, there are tons of little lakes and ponds, and even something called Griffin Lake further up the way.

What is in those lakes (obviously, besides crappie and presumably bass)? Is the fishing decent? Certainly a lot closer to me than the I82s.

fishinChristian

5/8/2013 7:58:00 AM

All the species of the other lower valley ponds reside there. I tend not to fish them much, partly due to distance, but also I think there are a limited number of fish in them. That being said, they do have some pretty good fish. Griffin used to be awesome for bass, but has silted in and become something of a lillypad swamp. It does have fish, but mostly carp and very small crappie last time I was there. Jiggy? Or whoever? Dzat match your impressions?

tluedeke

5/8/2013 9:34:00 PM

There's actually another couple of lakes, on the north side of OIE, between Benton City and Prosser, called "Badland Lakes". You or Jiggy know anything about those? Private or public? Fish or no fish? From Google maps it looks like there are two reasonably sized lakes there.

The Jigmiester

5/9/2013 4:26:00 PM

Hey Tluedeke. Unfortunately the "Badland" Lakes are now privately owned. There used to be good largemouth bass in both. At the time access was always difficult. I like fishing smallmouth and channel cats on the Yak along the OIE highway.

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