I had a great experience on the Columbia River recently. I was invited to fish for smallmouth bass on the stretch between Wanapum and Priest Rapids dams. Dave and Betty Hendergart are members of the Central Washington Bass Club, and they wanted to pre-fish this part of the river to prepare for a club tournament. I was thrilled to be invited to come along, as it had been a long time since I had been on this part of the Columbia and wanted to get more familiar with it. To learn some good smallmouth spots would be a bonus. These two are consistently at the top of the board at the local tournaments and I knew I would learn a lot from them, too. Turned out the fishing was very tough. Betty caught a decent fish pretty much right off the bat, but it was along time before Dave showed off and caught two more pretty close together. We had to look long and hard for good water. Just a lot of weeds off what appeared to be good smallmouth spots. We did learn where to go and that will pay dividends for them at the tournament, and I had a great time with two good bass anglers.