BirdTrout

West Branch Ausable River, New York

17.2 mapped river miles, draining 130 square miles, in the Ausable River basin watershed.

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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.

Thermal classification

There is no USGS gauge within 40 miles of this stream in the record this site holds, so there is no live temperature on this page and no measured July mean. Everything below the bar is NYSDEC's own classification of the water.

NYSDEC's classification of this water, reach by reach. It is the same classification the map paints from, and it is a class, not a temperature: no July mean appears on this page because none was measured on this water.

NYSDEC has classified 40.7 of the 41 miles NHD carries for this stream — 100% of it. Every typed reach carries the same class, cold. The untyped reaches are not warm water — they are water NYSDEC's inventory does not reach, and the mile ranges above span only the reaches it does.

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 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 →

Public land on the river

3 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 17,697 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Tributaries and watershed

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

• Chubb River 17.8 mi · RM 17.2
• Beaver Brook 8.8 mi · RM 0.0
• Roaring Brook 4.9 mi · RM 15.4
• Stephenson Brook 3.5 mi · RM 2.9

West Branch Ausable River sits in HUC 8 04300104, the Ausable River basin, and drains 130 square miles, Strahler order 5 at the mouth. 58 NHD reaches carry the name for 40.7 miles in total — more than the 17.2 miles of drawn mainstem, because NHD counts side channels and braids as their own reaches.