It was really nice to get a call from a brother fisherman friend of mine. Joe Cortez of Sunnyside called me the other morning to truck on up near Benton City for some early morning smallmouth fishing. Joe grew up fishing the many smallie haunts on the Yakima river, so I jumped at the chance to experience a few awesome hours wading and casting grubs for one of my favorite gamefish. The morning was cool, with a nice westerly breeze when we arrived at Joe's spot and after a short but steep down hill hike we were on the water.( It almost reminded me of drifting eggs on the "Klick" for steelhead )and it wasn't long before Joe netted about a 14" bass on a 3"pumpkin Kalin's grub. My previous experience with Joe fishing the I 82 ponds had led me to believe Joe was a novice jig fisherman, but on this day I watched my friend of catch bass after bass by casting into the numerous riffles and pools on this section of the Yakima. Using our polorized glasses Joe and I located and cast our Grubs to aggressive pods of Smallmouths who were roaming all over the shoals. I stuck with a smoke salt and pepper grub and found that Smallmouths were positioned to intercept and ambush just about anything thrown thier way. It was a real hoot watching those bronzebacks streak out of no-where to strike on a fast retrieve! "Air-born" all the way! We had caught somewhere close to 30 fish that morning untill the sun and the heat drove the bass back into the cooler flows in mid river,out of our reach. Many thanks to Joe for a great morning of fishing.( I'm hoping to see if Joe can download the cell phone pictures from this trip for all you Wa-Lakes smallmouth junkies...) The Jigmiester

---