Joel and Ellie were in town from Wisconsin and joined us for their first James River experience. We had a cooler full of white perch ready to go and grabbed a few fresh gizzard shad to start the trip. We started by scanning a channel ledge and saw a few nice marks hanging on the ledge and towards the bottom of the ledge. We set the boat up and got some fresh bait in the water. The bite was very quiet for the first hour or so but we saw fish continue to work their way under th

Lou, Kerry, Anthony, Nicholas, Layla, and Lennon joined us for their first trip fishing the James River. They wanted to catch some catfish, hoping for a mix between eaters and trophy fish. We set off down river and got right on some action with a small blue catfish being the first fish in the boat. We lost a few other small fish and one nice fish at our first anchor. We decided to move to deeper water and saw some great marks on the sonar. We weren't anchored for 20 minutes w

Dylan, Tanner, Chris, and Robby joined us for their first ever fishing trip on the James River. We took off down river and got right to work slinging out fresh bait. The tide was slowing down as we sat on our first anchor. Captain Dan explained how the big fish like to move and look for a snack when the water slows down. Right on queue, a rod was hit and we thought we had a decent mid size fish on the line. The fish was coming to the boat pretty easy until it was right under

Skip and Edward joined us on the James River for an afternoon trip. They wanted to catch some fish and a trophy would be an added bonus. This trip followed our morning trip from the previous blog post so we went right back to the hot bite we were on earlier. Unfortunately, the tide had flipped while we were picking the guys up so the pattern had changed. That’s one major challenge of fishing a tidal river. Stan and I theorized where the fish went and we took off to use our so

We had Donnie and Carson on the James River looking to land a couple of big catfish. We picked them up at the ramp and headed down river with a bunch of bait in the cooler. On our first anchor we had multiple rods getting hit at all times and managed to catch a couple of small eater catfish. We made an adjustment to our position and fished a little deeper water and caught another small catfish right away. As the sun got higher in the sky, the quality of the fish continued to

We had Steve, Drew, Christian, Matthew, Landon, and Keegan on the boat for a night trip. We started the trip off by fishing some deep pockets for catfish. While we’re waiting for the sun to go down, we caught our first fish of the night a small blue catfish. A little while later, another fish came in the boat about the same size. We moved to a new stretch of river and didn’t have much luck, but we didn’t spend much time before the sun was finally setting. As soon as the sun w

Dan, Aidan and Sienna came out for a morning trip on the James river. We started the morning fishing a channel ledge, throwing some rod deep and rods shallow. We sat on anchor for about 35 minutes with only one tap, shallow, and one tab deep. No fish hooked up, so we moved onto dragging baits in the shallow area. We saw a lot of fish on the side skin and committed to dragging for the next hour and a half. A couple promising hits early never turned into fish, but we were soon

Harold and Allison came out to the James River to try and catch some trophy fish. We started the morning off well before the sun came up looking for striper and white perch. From the second we pulled up we were catching white perch and striper left and right. After the first hour, we had caught nearly 70 fish and the biggest surprise in the morning showed up when a rod went down and there was a flounder on the other end. This flounder was too small to keep so we tossed it bac

Norris brought out his son, Levi, and daughter, Lexi, for a midnight madness fishing trip on the James River. The trip got off to a rocky start with a storm sneaking up on us. We had to wait in our vehicles for about two hours before we could finally hit the water. As soon as we got to our spot, the action was on fire. Nobody in this group had ever caught a striper before and we changed that very quickly. Lexi caught a nice one to start. Next Norris caught his first striper.

Lee and Jake joined us on the James River for an all night fishing frenzy! We started our trip by fishing for bait. Jake started the trip off with a bang by catching a 5lb largemeouth bass! We continued to fish and were catching striped bass one after another, often times doubling and tripling up. The striper bite died down and the white perch bite fired up. We were catching a bunch of jumbo white perch, some in the 10-11in range. We were having fun catching fish about every

Nakia booked a double birthday trip and brought Boaz, Nate and Mika along for the trip. We hit the river first thing in the morning and started fishing a channel ledge with live and cut bait while the gill net soaked. The gill net did not catch anything but we caught a small blue catfish to get the morning started. We sat a while longer and as we were reeling up the rods, we found a tiny bliue catfish on the line. What a surprise! We transitinoed over to drifting channel ledg

Hunter joined us on the James River, coming all the way from Texas. His goal was to set a new personal best for blue catfish. We started the evening by catching some live bait and then moved over to drifting channel ledges. Within the first 30 minutes of drifting, we had a major takedown that bent the rod tip into the water. Hunter grab the rod and battled the fish, which was 40 feet below the boat. The fish pulled drag a few times and finally blew bubbles and came to the sur

Kyle booked a trip for Lucas' birthday and brought Stone along. The goal of the day was to catch a giant catfish and we got right to work. We chunked up huge pieces of cut gizzard shad and started scanning for promising areas to fish. We weren't seeing much in the first location and made a run to a different stretch of river. For the next hour we marked great fish deep but they weren't interested in checking out the inside of the boat. After thoroughly working through these m

Jordan brought his boys Aiden and Able out for a fishing trip on the James River. Able had never caught a fish before and Aiden was looking to upgrade his personal best. We had some gizzard shad and panfish for bait and started cruising the river looking for a spot to fish. We headed up river but didn’t really mark any fish so we turned around and came back down. On our first spot, we set up on anchor and cast out seven rods. Rods were getting hit right away, but the fish wer

Nicki booked a trip for her family with the goal of catching some catfish for a fish fry. We started off the morning sitting on a pile of eater size catfish. The rods were getting hit non-stop but the fish were being finicky and nothing was hooking up. After many missed takedowns, we downsized on baits and hooks and that decision paid off. Within a few minutes, one of the fish hooked up and we had our first eater fish of the trip. The fish were still being finicky but we were

John booked a trip and brought his sons Wyatt and Grant out to experience the James River. The big catfish were still on spawn so we set our sights on catching a mess of eater size catfish. We set the gill net out while we fished our first spot. We didn't have to wait long and had fish coming in the boat left and right. The eater size catfish were on fire and we had to pull the rods in to check the gill net before it sat too long. The gill net had a few catfish and a bunch of

We had Kyle, Bradley, and Jakob out to celebrate a birthday party. We started the evening off trolling for striper. We marked fish up and down the river for well over an hour, but only caught one. We decided it was time to change gears and start catfish but first we had to catch some fresh bait. We showed the guys how to run a gill net and trolled for striper for another couple minutes while the gill net set. We pulled the net and had enough bait to fish for a couple hours. T

Ryan and Braidyn visited us from Colorado while they were on vacation. They wanted to get on some blue catfish and have steady action all day. We started the morning off catching fresh bait in the gill net. Our first fishing spot was a channel ledge with a steep drop off. We cast the rods out and they were getting taps right from when we set up. The sky let loose and it started to pour rain. The rain fired up the catfish and we started the morning off with a double up. We set

Kenya booked a trip with her sisters to celebrate her mom‘s birthday. These ladies were serious about fishing and put a hurting on the fish all morning long. The goal of the trip was to catch a bunch of meat for a fish fry and have an awesome time on the water. We had bait ready to go when our group arrived and we headed straight to our first catfish spot I didn’t even have all the rods in the water when they started getting tapped and it wasn’t long before our first fish in

Lisa booked a trip for Ezra’s birthday and he brought some family and friends on the water. We started the trip by fishing for striped bass, which was slow at first. We caught one fish right away, but nothing besides short strikes after that. We had to play around with our speed and direction of travel until we figured out the pattern. Once we dialed those things in the fishing was phenomenal. We caught about a dozen fish in an hour and a half. Some really nice striper came i