I've been bass fishin all my life in lakes,,,and I live 20 minutes from one of the best Smallmouth fisheries around,,The Susquahanna River ,,and only fished it 4 times,,,dumb on my part I know, I didn't do bad,,but I have a hard time dealing with the current,,I could use some advice. Whats the best way to handle it,,do you drift through the good spots and motor back up and do it again,,drag an anchor,,,does a drift sock work,,,I have no problem anchoring by the current break on the downside of an island,,but fishing the other areas ,,just moving too fast to fish it right,,,,any advice you have I would appreciate,,thanks

Google Dan Gapen and his books on river fishing. Excellent reads! He's an advocate of "slipping" a river. This technique uses your boat's main engine to slowly go forward, with your bow upstream - but not so fast as to make headway. Rather, allowing your boat to "slip" backwards with the current. Your boat goes downstream slower than the current flow.

Doing so allows you to probe and target current eddies and breaks that you you just cannot even begin to hope to do by just allowing your boat to drift with the current. Allows you to keep your presentation on the bottom most of the time.

Just another form of boat control that's worked very well for a lot of anglers over many years. Including me!

crestliner is  nailing it on the head.