BirdTrout
West Branch Delaware River, New York
17.4 mapped river miles, draining 455 square miles, in the Upper Delaware basin watershed. No gauge stands in it; the nearest is 32.0 miles away, and what this page knows about its temperature is NYSDEC's classification of the water itself.
Open in BirdTrout50°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.
The nearest live reading
There is no USGS gauge on the West Branch Delaware River. This is the nearest one — 32.0 miles away, at Delaware River — and it is not a reading of this water. It is here because it says what the region's streams are doing today, which is the question the classification below cannot answer. The reading is live; if that fetch cannot happen it falls back to the last value we cached, 28 August 2026, 15:45 UTC.
Thermal classification
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.
| Reach | Typed miles | Band | NYSDEC type |
|---|---|---|---|
| RM 17.4–0.0 | 67.8 | cold | — |
NYSDEC has classified 67.8 of the 81 miles NHD carries for this stream — 84% 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 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 →
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.
| Unit | Owner | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Cannonsville Fishing Access Area | city land | 2,767 |
| New York City Lands | city land | 561 |
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.