By T. Edward Nickens | April/May 2009 | 

Rapid Action

For nonstop smallmouth bass fishing, hop a raft on West Virginia's New River

To my left, half the New River pours over a rocky ledge to form a suckhole large enough to sink a couple of rafts. To my right, a reactionary wave boils off a boulder the size of a house trailer, a foam-capped tower of water like a dog’s lip snarl. And in my hand is a six-foot spinning rod armed with a four-inch white fluke, a sort of soft-plastic catnip to many a river-bred smallmouth bass.

So here’s my dilemma: Hang onto the raft as it pounds into the rapid? Or fire off a last-second cast to the slick green water that lies behind the boulder, where I would bet my life—and it feels like that’s what I’m doing—that a four-pound trophy smallmouth bass is holed up in there, stomach growling?

It’s not the first time I’ve been faced with such a decision today. I’m halfway through a daylong white-water fishing trip through West Virginia’s 1,000-foot-deep New River Gorge, and we’ve hammered Class IV and Class V rapids with just about as much frequency as we’ve hauled in beautiful bronze-colored smallmouth bass. It’s a crazy mix of white-knuckled white-water rafting and remote wilderness fishing, and the extremes won’t come to an end at the takeout. In a few hours, I’ll trade sixty-degree river water for a private hot tub on my cabin deck, then stroll over to an open-air restaurant perched on a canyon rim and feast on pasta with fresh mussels and grilled pork tenderloin. Hardly backcountry granola fare.

But before all that, my raft is about to disappear into a maelstrom of foam and fury, and I make a split-second decision to drop the rod and grab the bottom of my pedal seat. “We just might stay dry,” guide Sean Wishart says, just as a breaking wave crests the raft’s bow tube and shivers me timbers from the chest down. “Or not!” he hollers as the raft tilts forty-five degrees and drops into the maw of the Double Z drop.

Old and New
The New River flows through the south like a vine, stitching together the highlands of the Southern Appalachians. One of the continent’s few rivers that actually flow northward, it gains attitude with latitude. Born as a pair of pastoral tributaries in the highlands of North Carolina, the river’s North Fork and South Fork merge at the Virginia line. The river cuts a 1,500-foot-deep gap through Peters Mountain on the Virginia/West Virginia line, then slices through the New River Gorge in a last gasp of white-water glory just before flowing into the Kanawha River, and ultimately the Ohio.

Along the way, the New River deepens as its banks rise up in massive forested cliffs. Pools as dark as Grendel’s lair and swift, boulder-broken runs make the fishing for smallmouth bass rival better-known bronzeback waterways such as the James River. I set out to fish the river twice, with a pair of outfitters on either side of Peters Mountain. One trip was a deluxe fully outfitted affair with cushy accommodations. The other was a three-day camping trip with my nine-year-old son. Both were world-class adventures, destined to be repeated.

White-Water Wonderland
Most folks show up at West Virginia’s New River with just one thing on their minds: survival. The river drops 750 feet in 50 Mountain State miles, more than half the total drop of the Mississippi River in its entire 2,300-mile course, and careens over Class IV and Class V rapids with pucker-worthy names: Greyhound Bus Stopper. Whale Rock. Double Z. Old 99.

But there’s more to the Grand Canyon of the East than a redline dose of adrenaline. “It won’t happen every day,” says Wishart, a ponytailed fishing addict who runs the smallmouth operation at Class VI–Mountain River, “but one-hundred-fish days are pretty common here. And four- and five-pounders aren’t unknown.”

Over thirty-two years Class VI–Mountain River has evolved into the go-to Mountain State outfitter for the New River area. Guides like Wishart and “Squirrel” Hager pound the river for upwards of a hundred days a year, threading fourteen-foot Avon oar rafts through some of the biggest white water in the East.

Some of my crowd knocked on the one-hundred-fish door pretty hard, but not me. Early in the day I lost an estimated five-pound fish right at the boat, so I spent the next six hours trophy hunting to make up for a lost reputation. I landed plenty of fish but never again came close to the twenty-inch-plus smallie that spat out my hook and give me a defiant look of disgust as he disappeared into the maw of the New.

Thankfully, there were plenty of ways to put a salve on my angling sorrows. Once the fishing ended for the day, we headed to Smokey’s on the Gorge for its Appalachian gourmet buffet—think barbecued wild boar to blackened shrimp pasta—then hung out for a little live bluegrass music as shooting stars seared the sky overhead.