BirdTrout
Rocky River, Ohio
12.1 mapped river miles, draining 290 square miles, in the Black Rocky 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, 02:34 UTC. None of them, in fact: Berea Oh is not reporting water temperature — its last water temperature was 23 days ago, on 5 September 2026. That pill carries a modelled temperature where one can be fitted, marked as modelled, and a dash where it cannot — never a stale reading dressed as a current one.
Thermal classification
Nobody has classified this water's temperature.Ohio EPA publishes no temperature classification for this water. What it publishes is the aquatic life use below — a habitat designation under Ohio Administrative Code 3745-1, which describes the assemblage the water holds rather than the temperature it runs at. It is the state saying this water is worth recording; it is not the state saying the water is cold. So the bands below are drawn grey rather than coloured, and grey here means unmeasured, not warm. The one temperature on this page is the live reading from the nearest USGS gauge, 0.0 miles away.
Each gauge carries a July mean built from its own daily record — 3 Julys, 2024–2026, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Berea Oh RM 12.1–0.0 |
75.8 °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. ±2.16 °F on the fit.
The lake run
The Rocky River is a Lake Erie tributary with 11.9 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 Rocky River →
Questions about this river
- Rocky River fishing report — what it reads right now
- When to fish the Rocky River — hatches, seasons and temperature
- How to get to the Rocky River — access, parking and public land
- Rocky River fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
Ohio EPA classification
Ohio EPA classifies this water as Warmwater Habitat. This is Ohio EPA's description of the aquatic community the water supports, assigned under OAC 3745-1 on fish and macroinvertebrate survey scores. It is not the season and creel rules — those are the ODNR Division of Wildlife's, change yearly, and live with that agency.
Ohio EPA water quality standards, OAC 3745-1 →
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 12.1–0.0 down to Berea Oh |
47.8 | 75.8 °F | — |
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.
-
Rocky River near Berea Oh
— 04201500 · RM 0.0
75 July days of record across 3 Julys (2024–2026) · 65 cfs at last read
Public land on the river
1 unit of public or open-access land touches this river, 2,537 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.
| Unit | Owner | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Rocky River Reservation | county land | 2,537 |
Species
Ohio EPA designates this as trout water — Warmwater Habitat — 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berea Oh | 75.8 °F | 23.9 °F | 3 |
Tributaries and watershed
4 named streams meet this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.
- West Branch Rocky River 42.6 mi · RM 12.1
- East Branch Rocky River 40.4 mi · RM 12.1
- Abram Creek 5.6 mi · RM 10.4
- West Channel Rocky River 0.4 mi · RM 0.5
Rocky River sits in HUC 8 04110001, the Black Rocky basin, and drains 290 square miles, Strahler order 6 at the mouth. 15 NHD reaches carry the name for 12.2 miles in total.
Other water nearby
The closest 6 rivers on this site, straight-line from the middle of this one — not drive time.