Attached Link: animated water using an AVI for displacment

If you are going to work on just a ground plane, then you should at least use a displacement map to create stream banks.  It would be better to use a terrain with a stream bed trough formed into the mesh, and a separate water plane, if you can.

Another consideration would be a wake for the barge.  I've done this by using a mesh wake model attached to the boat, and applying the same displacement AVI to the wake which I used on the water, but at different scale.  It certainly isn't perfect, but it's better than no wake.  I often use Jepe's water ripple AVI set.

Here's a streambed terrain and a waterplane with Jepe's AVI using the Cyclorama:

Another animation using AVI water displacement:  (click tiny rectangle)

boat wake and waterplane both displacement mapped with an AVI:

Did this help?  I could also extract the wake mesh from my sailboat, and you can use my streambed terrain if you want it, though right now I'm pretty busy with finishing the TinkerBell's Drive-in Cafe'  model (hence the jukebox. ^^)
You'll need a water AVI.  I just bought a commercial Genetica license, but it's intended for a workstation which I don't even have yet, so it will be quite a while before I can make my own water ripple AVIs.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5