BirdTrout

Catawba River, North Carolina

13.3 mapped river miles, draining 387 square miles, in the Catawba basin watershed. 7 USGS gauges report water temperature on it, and this page reads all 7.

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Public land — where the bank is open to walk and fish

USGS gauge — live water temperature

Water temperature — the colour of the river, and of every dot on it

58 64 70

50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands, breaking at 58, 64 and 70°F, that the app paints. Grey is water nobody has measured.

Water temperature right now

Live from the USGS — every pill above is live, so the numbers you are reading are the latest continuous readings at each gauge. Provisional and unreviewed, as all real-time data is. If that fetch cannot happen — you are offline, or the USGS is down — the pills fall back to the last value we cached, 30 September 2026, 13:50 UTC.

The pills above go to USGS. These are this site's pages for the same gauges — a thirty-day chart, the monthly means, the record, and today's reading against the five-year normal for today: 02137727, 02138520.

Thermal classification

This is inferred, not measured. North Carolina WRC does not publish a temperature classification for this water. What it publishes is a management tier — whether the trout in it are wild, hold over through summer, or are stocked and fished out — and the bands below are read off that tier, because a stream that sustains wild trout is a cold stream and one that does not hold fish past July is not. It is the agency's judgement of the fishery translated into the four bands this site paints everywhere else; it is not a thermometer, and where the two disagree the thermometer is right.

Each gauge carries a July mean built from its own daily record — 8 Julys, 2019–2026, measured rather than modelled. A July mean is what decides which of the four bands a stretch of water belongs to, because July is when a trout river either holds or does not.

Every gauge sits at the bottom of its segment, so each number is the warm end and the water above it runs colder. ±1.75 °F on the fit.

Questions about this river

• Catawba River fishing report — what it reads right now
• When to fish the Catawba River — hatches, seasons and temperature
• How to get to the Catawba River — access, parking and public land
• Catawba River fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
• Is the Catawba River good for brown trout?
• Is the Catawba River good for rainbow trout?

North Carolina WRC classification

North Carolina WRC classifies this water as Delayed Harvest Trout Waters, Hatchery Supported Trout Waters, Special Regulation Trout Waters, and Wild Trout Waters. More than one class appears because the classification changes along the river. The thermal bar above shows where. The management tier on those reaches is stocked holdover, unknown, wild. This is a designation of the fishery, not the season and creel rules — those change yearly and live with the agency.

NCWRC public mountain trout waters →

Fishable reaches

River miles are measured above the mouth, along the mapped mainstem. The reach breaks are the gauges, which is also how the temperature model divides the river.

0 mapped access sites on the mainstem: 0 walk-in, 0 boat or canoe launches.

USGS gauges

Every gauge on the mainstem, upstream first. Links go to the USGS monitoring-location page for the site.

• Catawba R Nr Pleasant Gardens — 02137727 · RM 0.0
  248 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 104 cfs at last read
• Catawba R at Sr1223 Bl Lk James Nr Bridgewater — 02138520 · RM 0.0
  248 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 102 cfs at last read
• Catawba River at Rhodhiss — 02141500 · RM 0.0
  240 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026)
• Catawba River at Nc Highway 16 Nr Millersville — 0214196125 · RM 0.0
  238 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 156 cfs at last read
• Catawba River Bl Lookout Shoals Dam Nr Sharon — 0214244102 · RM 0.0
  248 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026)
• Catawba R at Rr Bridge Ab Nc 73 at Cowans Ford — 0214264790 · RM 0.0
  248 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026)
• Catawba River Dnstrm Deck Mtn Is Dam Nr Mtn Is — 0214267602 · RM 0.0
  247 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026)

Public land on the river

2 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 137,823 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Species

• Brown Trout surveyed
• Rainbow Trout surveyed

NC DEQ recorded brown trout here in a fish community survey, in 1997, at one sampling site on this water.

NC DEQ recorded rainbow trout here in a fish community survey, between 1997 and 2017, at one sampling site on this water.

Historical July mean

The measured record behind every temperature band on this page: the mean of the daily means for July, at each gauge, over the years USGS has one.

Hatches on this water

52 insects are recorded from the North Carolina mountains, which is the region this river sits in. That is a claim about the region and not a survey of this stream: nobody has recorded which of them has been caught here. Open the river in the app and the hatch panel will narrow it to the ones whose temperature window today's reading is inside.

And 38 more — the year-round records, mostly: midges, scuds and sculpins, which are in the water every day and are therefore never the news.

Tributaries and watershed

3 named streams meet this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.

• Linville River 44.9 mi · RM 0.1
• North Fork Catawba River 23.1 mi · RM 12.1
• Paddy Creek 7.3 mi · RM 2.3

Catawba River sits in HUC 8 03050101 and 03050102, the Catawba basin, and drains 387 square miles, Strahler order 8 at the mouth. 479 NHD reaches carry the name for 58.4 miles in total — more than the 13.3 miles of drawn mainstem, because NHD counts side channels and braids as their own reaches.

Other water nearby

The closest 6 rivers on this site, straight-line from the middle of this one — not drive time.

• Jacob Fork 7.3 mi
• Henry Fork 11.9 mi
• Laurel Creek 13.4 mi
• Pheasant Creek 14.0 mi
• Nettle Branch 14.1 mi
• Shinny Creek 14.2 mi