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Trout fishing near Elkins, West Virginia

Last updated 2026-09-24 · water classified by WV DEP

WV DEP designates 533 named streams as trout water within 40 miles of Elkins, West Virginia — 2040 miles of it inside that circle. The most of it is Shavers Fork, 4 miles out, with 72.8 classified miles that WV DEP designates as Trout waters — part of an assessment unit. The closest is Shavers Fork at 4 miles. A designation is WV DEP'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 Elkins

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 WV DEP use Size
Shavers Fork 4 72.8 Trout waters — part of an assessment unit medium stream
South Branch Potomac River 30.7 38.4 Trout waters — part of an assessment unit river
Laurel Fork (Cheat) 13.7 37.4 Trout waters — whole assessment unit medium stream
North Fork South Branch Potomac River 25.3 37.1 Trout waters — whole assessment unit river
Dry Fork (Cheat) 15.5 35.9 Trout waters — part of an assessment unit creek
Blackwater River 15.8 34.2 Trout waters — whole assessment unit small stream
Glady Fork 10.4 31.9 Trout waters — whole assessment unit medium stream
Tygart Valley River 7.5 28.8 Trout waters — part of an assessment unit creek

533 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 WV DEP publishes no thermal class. What it publishes is the designated trout use of West Virginia's water quality standards, 47 CSR 2 — 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 WV DEP is saying, and what it is not

Every row above is on the list because West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection publishes the designated trout use of West Virginia's water quality standards, 47 CSR 2. That is the reach carrying WV DEP's Category B-2 trout water designation under 47 CSR 2, which the rule defines as water that sustains a year-round trout population — water stocked annually that does not hold trout over is excluded by name. Every designated reach is counted: the layer's E, P and TT codes say whether the designation runs over the whole assessment unit, part of one, or a tailwater, and none of the three is a weaker finding than another. The list is also not a census — 47 CSR 2 Appendix A says in as many words that it does not exclude other water meeting the definition — so an undesignated reach is unlisted rather than ruled out. 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.

Where you can get to the water

Named public access standing on classified coldwater within 40 miles, nearest first. Each of these has a page of its own here, and that page says which list it came from — one of the five agencies, or OpenStreetMap, which is where most of the bridges and two-tracks a trout fisherman actually parks at are recorded. A site being on this list is not a claim about who owns the bank on either side of it, and the water named beside it is the classified reach the site stands nearest to rather than the one it is named for.

17 of them are in range and the 10 nearest are named.

Thermometers in range

USGS gauges within 40 miles that report water temperature, nearest first. Federal rather than the state's, so one may stand across a state line. No reading is printed here — this page is about where the water is, and a temperature on it would be true only of the minute it was built. The river pages carry the live numbers.

Read next

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