Spencer came out for a return trip and brought his wife. The river had changed a lot in the week since his last trip with the Hickory shad bite pretty much dying out for the season. He said he wanted to get on anything we could catch so we got right to work. We drifted down the river jigging on schools of white perch and blueback herring, although there were not many white perch to be found. The few that we caught, we kept for bait. The blue back herring are not allowed to be

Marquise and D’Andre join us on the water for their first ever James River catfishing trip. We had bait ready to go when they rolled up, but still caught some extra fresh bait in the first 20 minutes of the trip. We set up on our first spot and had action right from the start on both live and cut bait. The first fish to hit the deck was a blue catfish weighing in around 6 pounds. We kept this one for the grease. We caught a few more fish in this spot and put them in the livew

Tim won our raffle for an eight hour guided fishing trip and he decided to fish at night. We started the evening by soaking the gill net and using some of our white perch from our morning trip to fish while we waited on the net. It took a few sets of the gill net to find some gizzard Shad, but while we waited, we were able to start the evening off with a blue catfish around 8 pounds. It wasn’t long before the sun was setting, and we transitioned over to fishing some lighted d

Johnathan came out for his first ever trip on the James River. An avid fisherman with a lot of catfish experience, this was his first time fishing tidal water. We started the trip off by catching a boatload of white perch for bait. The first spot we pulled up to we were marking bait and fish however, we could not get the boat to sit still. We moved on down river and found a nice calm area to fish. We marked a lot of fish, including two nice big fish. Rods were getting hit as

Jeremy booked a fishing trip and brought his two sons out. We decided to chase some crappie, whic have been on fire through spawn. The trip started out quickly with 3 fish coming in the boat as soon as we started trolling. Two crappie and 1 white perch. The white perch was keeper size but the crappie were small so we tossed them back. We continued to work our way into a creek, with pockets of action as we went. We caught a few more white perch and small crappie. As we got int

We had Haz Life down to shoot a YouTube video on the boat. The goal was to hang out, kick back, and catch a couple fish. We had fresh bait ready to go from our morning trips so it was fishing time! The wind was gusting and we pulled off the river to hide in a shallow mud flat. We didn’t even have all the rods out before they were getting tapped. We missed a couple of finicky fish right off the bat before hooking up with a nice blue catfish. This fish came out of the shallows

Todd booked a trip for his daughter and son-in-law to join him on the James River for the first time. We started the morning catching white perch for bait. After about an hour of reeling and fish after fish, we set our sites on chasing catfish. Our first catfish of the day came in and it was a small blue catfish. We tossed the rods back out and hooked up on a nice blue catfish in the 15 pound range. Shortly after catching that fish, we found another blue catfish a little unde

Spencer moved to Richmond about a year ago and was interested to see what all the boats were doing in the city this time of year. We spent a couple morning hours bouncing around, showing him the lay of the land. We started the morning fishing for Hickory shad and the bite was intermittent. We caught about a half dozen Hickory shad mixed in with a ton of blueback herring which we are not allowed to keep. About halfway through the trip, we transitioned to white perch fishing us

Matt booked an evening trip, looking for Hickory shad. The Hickory shad were not very fired up, but we spent a couple hours catching blueback herring, White perch and just a couple Hickory shad. This was a short trip and we decided to transition to catfish as the sun was setting. We moved down river and anchored up on some structure that has been holding fish all spring. We didn’t have rods in the water for 10 minutes when a hellcat rod folded over. Matt’s Dad Sam jumped on

We had Tim, Thomas, and Helene out for an evening guide trip. Thomas was really wanting to get on some big fish so we put a plan together and got right to work. We had a bunch of white perch in the livewell when our guests arrived and it was game on. We started the evening by drifting through a bunch of schools of fish and to our surprise none of them hooked up. After giving this tactic 30 minutes without any bites, we knew we had to take a slower approach. While we were drif

Kinta, Mara, Xavier, and Elijah came down for a trip on the James. We started the morning off, catching some fresh hickory shad while we sat on anchor. At our first location, we caught a few small fish and then decided to move spots. We tried a series of spots working our way down the river, all of which were producing fish, but not quite the one we were looking for. The best fish of this stretch was about 18 pounds. As the sun started to come up, we started fishing some more

We had Tina, Lisa, Renee, and Brad out for a trip to memorialize the passing of their father, an avid fisherman. Some of the siblings had fished with their father in the past, but nobody was too experienced with blue catfish. We started the morning off catching some fresh bait and got right to fishing. The rods were going down consistently in our first spot as we caught a bunch of small blue catfish. After catching four or five fish, we started to search for larger fish. We s

Jordan, JJ, and Garrett came out for a catfish trip on the hunt for a trophy fish. They were troopers coming out for a night trip during a cold front with rain in the forecast. At the time of launch, the rain was coming down pretty good, but we had our Bimini top up to keep everybody as dry as we could. We had fresh bait in the cooler and got right to fishing. It didn’t take long for a few blue catfish to start hitting the deck. We were picking through small fish and decide t

James and JJ were in town from Michigan for spring break and decided to come out fishing with Goober Time Guide Service. They enjoy centering their vacations around chasing fish and it was time for the James River to show them why it’s world famous. We had fresh hickory shad ready to go when our guest stepped on the boat and we got right to work. On our first anchor, we were getting a lot of short strikes, but eventually a rod folded over with the first trophy fish of the day

With the daytime bite being somewhat finicky, I decided to give the night bite a try. Being a teacher on spring break I had the opportunity to fish Sunday evening into Monday morning, and I took full advantage I hit the water and grabbed some bait, then went up river to fish for some hickory shad before the sun went down. I had enough bait to last the entire night and got rods rigged up, ready to go. On the first anchor, I caught a small fish, but it was proving to be too win

We had Joseph, Theresa, Mary, and Keith jump on the boat for a day of Crappie fishing. We started the day off, trolling crank baits and got into three fish in the first 10 minutes. These were medium size crappie and we were excited about what the day had in store. We reset the rods and started trolling again and things were a little quiet. We made some adjustments to our set up and put some jigs out. This is when we start to get into the fish again. We were trolling through t

Stan and I went on a scouting mission to a lake for an upcoming crappie guide trip. We were disappointed to find that the bait shop was out of minnows. Luckily, we brought some worms and started the morning off fishing a pile of fish with slip floats. The bite was pretty slow and we only caught two crappie out of the school so we started to move through a creek. We were long lining crappie jigs behind the boat and started to get on fish right away. The further we went back in

Chandlar, Dwayne, Morris, and Robert joined us on the river for Chandlar’s birthday party. The goal was to catch a bunch of eaters. Being a half day trip we got right to work and started catching fish from our first spot. We started the day off with a double up and that got everybody fired up. In this first spot everybody had a chance to catch at least one fish, and after about an hour, it was time to move on. At our next spot, we picked up a couple fish, but it wasn’t nearly

The James River has fully come to life for the Spring. Robert and Mark came out for a half day trip in the morning with their sights set on catching a trophy fish. We had bait in the cooler and got straight to fishing once we picked the gentleman up. We started our morning with cut Hickory shad, drifting channel ledges down the river. We had a couple small taps that didn’t hook up but we promised our guest those were just little fish and not the ones they were looking for. Sh

Kara reached out to us and purchased a half day fishing trip for her dad‘s birthday present. The group was interested in trophy size catfish. We had plenty of bait left over from our morning trip so we picked the group up and took off to start fishing. It was a gorgeous 70° day, but the wind was howling. With steady winds around 15 to 20 miles an hour we had to choose our fishing locations carefully. In our first spot, we targeted structure and the fish weren’t super interest