Actually, I enjoy both wading the rivers and floating the rivers in order to fish for smallmouth bass. My son, Jeff, has a nice Hyde Drift Boat which is very comfortable to fish from and great for enabling us to fish the very deep water along the river banks.
However, when we come to thick aquatic grassbeds in water 2 to 3 feet deep either along the river banks or around the rock ledges in the middle of the river, we beach the boat and wade the most productive feeding stations. We usually do the same thing on the riffles, we beach to boat well upstream of the riffles then wade the riffles so we can fish it thoroughly. ( I always did think that my guides practice of running the boat through the riffles on the Yellowstone River to beach it downstream of the riffles scared many of the trout we wanted to fish for).
Many evenings after I close my Fly Shop, I fish the North Fork of the Shenandoah River for smallmouths. I always wade when doing this fishing. This saves me time and permits me to thoroughly fish some of the flat pool tails and shallow riffles which we would spook with our boat. Actually, I often catch more large bass the last two hours of the day than I do on a day-long float trip. I believe that the reason for my success on these evenings is that I concentrate on the smallmouth’s primary feeding stations and the low angle of the sun encourages the bass to feed very aggressively.