Bass Fishing A River?

no difference, just a nuance of our language.

On smaller non navigable rivers, I like crawdad imitators, IE jigs/crankbaits.  Throw the jig out and crawl it on the bottom until you back it up to some object (rock, grass, log) and then jiggle the tip of rock.  Makes it look like a crawdad trying to dig into the cover.  Caught a really nice 20 inch smallmouth doing that last year.

Topwater is usually dynamite in the summer.  Texas rigged swimming soft plastics are great too, allows you to throw in cover/bounce off rocks/ or swim over grass.