BirdTrout

West Branch Delaware River, New York

17.4 mapped river miles, draining 455 square miles, in the Upper Delaware basin watershed. 4 USGS gauges report water temperature on it, and this page reads all 4.

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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, 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.

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.

Questions about this river

• West Branch Delaware River fishing report — what it reads right now
• When to fish the West Branch Delaware River — hatches, seasons and temperature
• How to get to the West Branch Delaware River — access, parking and public land
• West Branch Delaware River fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach

NYSDEC classification

NYSDEC classifies this water as Class A — drinking water source, 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.

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.

• West Branch Delaware River at Walton Ny — 01423000 · RM 0.0
  213 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 185 cfs at last read
• West Branch Delaware River at Stilesville Ny — 01425000 · RM 0.0
  245 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 467 cfs at last read
• West Branch Delaware River at Hale Eddy Ny — 01426500 · RM 0.0
  246 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 596 cfs at last read
• West Branch Delaware River at Hancock Ny — 01427000 · RM 0.0
  248 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, 3,328 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

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.

Tributaries and watershed

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

• Trout Creek 17.5 mi · RM 4.0
• Dryden Brook 7.1 mi · RM 8.1
• Johnny Brook 4.5 mi · RM 3.1
• Chase Brook 4.1 mi · RM 14.2
• Fish Brook 3.6 mi · RM 12.2
• Chamberlain Brook 2.9 mi · RM 7.5
• Wakeman Brook 2.8 mi · RM 14.7

West Branch Delaware River sits in HUC 8 02040101, the Upper Delaware basin, and drains 455 square miles, Strahler order 6 at the mouth. 252 NHD reaches carry the name for 81.0 miles in total — more than the 17.4 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.

• Cadosia Creek 3.3 mi
• Sands Creek 5.0 mi
• Read Creek 5.3 mi
• Johnny Brook 5.8 mi
• East Brook 6.3 mi
• West Branch Delaware River 6.7 mi · PA