River sections that meander back and forth between, or form the border between, two states seem -- from my experience -- to either attract a great deal of fishing pressure or relatively little. An example of the former would have to be the Potomac River, which forms the line between Maryland and West Virginia and later the Free State and Virginia. An example of the latter would be the upper New as it winds its way back and forth between the Old Dominion and North Carolina.

I rarely encounter very many anglers on the 33-mile section of the New from the confluence of the North and South Forks of the New to Baywood. Every summer, I try to experience at least one of the four floats that constitute this section. Last August, for example, I fished from Independence to Baywood with guides Mike Smith and Captain Forest Pressnell. Before reviewing that float and examining the other three possible trips, let's take a look at the upper New from a biologist's perspective.

FISHERY OVERVIEW
Kevin Hining, a fisheries biologist for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC), is in charge of monitoring the upper New along with fellow biologist Kin Hodges. Hining relates that the NCWRC recently sampled the river in the area of the Alleghany Access site.

"The majority of smallmouth bass we captured were between 210 and 300 mm (8 to 12 inches)," Hining said. "We only captured two fish greater than 12 inches in size. This is down from our previous sample collected in 2003. This may be a function of missing older year-classes that are needed in order to produce fish greater than 12 inches. We have been surprised to see that a 10- to 12-inch smallmouth may be 5 to 6 years old. So growth is fairly slow in the upper portion of the river.

"On a good note, we found lots of 1-year-old-plus age fish, indicating that spawning was successful in 2004. We didn't see many age zero fish, so the 2005 year-class appears to have been poor. These fish may not have recruited to our gear, so it's possible they were there and we just couldn't capture them. We'll know this year when we sample again."

He also added that biologists did capture a muskie at this site. It was a young/small one, only 17 inches long. However, it's rare that they encounter muskies while sampling the upper sections of the New. The sampling also captured a couple of flathead catfish, both about 32 inches. More typical were the large number of rock bass, most in the 6- to 8-inch size range, and a few redbreast sunfish, that the sampling caught.

Currently, notes Hining, the NCWRC doesn't have any management changes planned on the main stem of the New. The biologist said that staff is in the early stages of collecting data on the New, as is the case with the other smallmouth rivers in the state. This is just the second sample involving age and growth information.