BirdTrout
Cattaraugus Creek, New York
13.0 mapped river miles, draining 87 square miles, in the Cattaraugus basin watershed. 1 USGS gauge report water temperature on it, and this page reads it.
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, 1 October 2026, 02:35 UTC.
Thermal classification
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.
| Reach | July mean | Band | Groundwater |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Gowanda Ny RM 13.0–0.0 |
75.1 °F | warm | low |
Every gauge sits at the bottom of its segment, so each number is the warm end and the water above it runs colder. ±2.33 °F on the fit.
The lake run
The Cattaraugus Creek is a Lake Erie tributary with 35.7 miles of run corridor on it — salmon, steelhead and lake-run brown trout, on their own calendar and under their own rules. Run timing, species and access on the Cattaraugus Creek →
Questions about this river
- Cattaraugus Creek fishing report — what it reads right now
- When to fish Cattaraugus Creek — hatches, seasons and temperature
- How to get to Cattaraugus Creek — access, parking and public land
- Cattaraugus Creek fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
NYSDEC classification
NYSDEC classifies this water as Class B — swimming and contact recreation and Class C — fishing. More than one class appears because the classification changes along the river. The thermal bar above shows where. On those reaches DEC also designates it trout spawning waters, trout waters — which is the half of the classification that is about temperature, and the half this map paints by. The class is a designation of best usage under 6 NYCRR — what the water is protected for — and not the season and creel rules, which change yearly and live with the agency.
NYSDEC water quality classifications and standards →
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.
| Reach | Miles | July mean | Access on it |
|---|---|---|---|
|
RM 13.0–0.0 down to Gowanda Ny |
67.1 | 75.1 °F | 1 site — angler parking |
1 mapped access sites on the mainstem: 1 walk-in, 0 boat or canoe launches. Source: NYSDEC.
USGS gauges
Every gauge on the mainstem, upstream first. Links go to the USGS monitoring-location page for the site.
-
Cattaraugus Creek at Gowanda Ny
— 04213500 · RM 0.0
244 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 138 cfs at last read
Public land on the river
2 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 1,500 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.
| Unit | Owner | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Zoar Valley Unique Area | state conservation department | 1,494 |
| Village Of Gowanda Land | city land | 6 |
Species
NYSDEC designates this as trout water — Trout spawning waters, Trout waters — without naming the species. No fish survey or stocking record for this water is in the files this site reads.
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.
| Gauge | July mean | July range | Julys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gowanda Ny | 75.1 °F | 18.7 °F | 8 |
Tributaries and watershed
5 named streams meet this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.
- Clear Creek 38.6 mi · RM 0.0
- Thatcher Brook 6.2 mi · RM 8.6
- Little Indian Creek 5.2 mi · RM 1.7
- Point Peter Brook 4.0 mi · RM 11.3
- Grannis Creek 3.8 mi · RM 8.7
Cattaraugus Creek sits in HUC 8 04120102, the Cattaraugus basin, and drains 87 square miles, Strahler order 6 at the mouth. 194 NHD reaches carry the name for 78.5 miles in total — more than the 13.0 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.