This was my first time on the Mattiponi river. It was not much more than a creek up this far. It is north of Richmond and south of Tappahanock. My first perch attempt. We ease down river until we found a fishing looking outside bend. Marked some suspended fish (maybe crappie or gizzard shad). We anchored and put out 4 minnow rigs on the bottom. Then 3 corks with minnows suspended above them. Tide was just beginning to go out. No luck for a while, then caught the first one while winding up to move. Looking back this should have told me they wanted it moving. So, we stayed. Then nothing. I kept pitching one of the cork/minnow rigs out to the side and let it swing with the current. That one caught the one crappie.

The bass boat came up behind us, made small talk and were casting small orange head/yellow or chart. Bodies (hair I think). They caught maybe a dozen. Then one of them switched to a gold colored silver buddy. And caught some more. We pulled up and moved closer and began catching ours on the a ¼ oz Gold silver buddy, right on the bottom.

It was almost a 90° bend in the river with the deeper water on the outside. Strange thing was there was an eddy there. From the look of the bank and current you couldn’t really see it. And you would not have expected it to be, from the look of everything. The fish, mostly all males were on the bottom in the eddy. We moved out into the moving water and made some drifts but caught nothing the there. The eddy water was 15-18’ deep.

Now I am new to this. So if we go back, and the same thing happens again, where might we look for the bigger fish (females?) to be? Should we look for more slack water? Deeper/shallower? Swift water? Do they like current? Structure?

Thanks for the help. Crash14me2 lives close by. I am going to have to get with him and see what we can do.

Dayton