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Trout fishing near Martins Ferry, Ohio

Last updated 2026-09-24 · water classified by Ohio EPA

Ohio EPA designates 331 named streams as coldwater or seasonal salmonid habitat within 40 miles of Martins Ferry, Ohio — 1788.1 miles of it inside that circle. The most of it is Stillwater Creek, 20.6 miles out, with 47.7 classified miles that Ohio EPA designates as Warmwater Habitat. The closest is Wheeling Creek at 2.3 miles. A designation is Ohio EPA's statement about the water, not a record of a fish in it and not permission to stand on the bank — check access and the current regulations before you go.

The trout water within 40 miles of Martins Ferry

Ranked by how much classified water lies inside the circle, and by nothing else. Distance is a straight line to the nearest point of the stream rather than to its middle, because the question is how far you drive before you can park — this app carries no road network and will not print a drive time it cannot compute. A stream that runs out of the circle is counted for the part that is inside it, never for its whole length.

Stream Miles out Classified miles Ohio EPA use Size
Stillwater Creek part of the stream 20.6 47.7 Warmwater Habitat river
Yellow Creek 26.8 32.6 Exceptional Warmwater Habitat river
Sunfish Creek 24.4 32.5 Warmwater Habitat medium stream
Wheeling Creek 2.3 31.5 Warmwater Habitat medium stream
Cross Creek 14.1 31 Warmwater Habitat medium stream
Conotton Creek part of the stream 19.6 30.4 Warmwater Habitat medium stream
McMahon Creek 6.4 28.9 Exceptional Warmwater Habitat medium stream
Captina Creek 16.2 25.7 Exceptional Warmwater Habitat medium stream

331 named streams clear the circle in all and the 8 holding the most classified water are named. The rest carry less water than something a reader would pass on the way to it.

A stream marked part of the stream carries classified water outside the circle too, and the mileage here is only what is inside it. There is no thermal column, because Ohio EPA publishes no thermal class. What it publishes is the aquatic life use designations of Ohio Administrative Code 3745-1 — and Chapter 6264 is a timber-harvest and watershed-permitting rule, so a reach being listed under it says the legislature protected the watershed, not that anybody measured the water in July. Rather than infer a temperature from a land-use statute, this page leaves the column out.

What Ohio EPA is saying, and what it is not

Every row above is on the list because Ohio Environmental Protection Agency publishes the aquatic life use designations of Ohio Administrative Code 3745-1. That is the reach carrying Ohio EPA's coldwater habitat use under OAC 3745-1-07(B)(1)(f), or its seasonal salmonid habitat use under (B)(1)(e) — the Erie tributary designation, which the rule puts in effect from October to May and replaces with another use from June to September. Neither is a temperature: Ohio publishes no thermal classification, and the coldwater use covers both water holding native coldwater fauna and water the Division of Wildlife runs a trout programme on that could be restored to coldwater. Warmwater, exceptional warmwater, modified warmwater and limited resource reaches are not counted here. It is not a record of a fish caught there, it is not a promise about any particular day, and it is not permission to walk to the bank — the land beside a classified stream can be private, and in most of these five states most of it is.

Getting to the water

This site has no access pages in Ohio yet, so this page names none. That is an absence in what has been built rather than an absence of places to fish, and an invented list would be worse than this sentence. Check Ohio EPA for access, and read the boundary of any land you cross — a stream being classified says nothing about who owns the bank.

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Open this water on the map →Every reach around it coloured by today's water temperature, with the access points along it.