BirdTrout

Lehigh River, Pennsylvania

22 mapped river miles, draining 288 square miles, in the Lehigh River basin watershed. 3 USGS gauges report water temperature on it, and this page reads all 3.

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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, 30 September 2026, 14:04 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. ±2.48 °F on the fit.

Questions about this river

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

PA DEP classification

PA DEP classifies this water as Cold Water Fishes, Trout Stocking, and Warm Water Fishes. More than one class appears because the classification changes along the river. The thermal bar above shows where. The management tier on those reaches is Cold Water Fishes, Trout Stocking, Warm Water Fishes. This is a designation of the fishery, not the season and creel rules — those change yearly and live with the agency.

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.

1 mapped access sites on the mainstem: 0 walk-in, 1 boat or canoe launches. Source: PA DEP.

USGS gauges

Every gauge on the mainstem, upstream first. Links go to the USGS monitoring-location page for the site.

• Lehigh River at Stoddartsville, Pa — 01447500 · RM 0.0
  246 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 139 cfs at last read
• Lehigh R Bl Francis E Walter Res Nr White Haven Pa — 01447800 · RM 0.0
  246 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 381 cfs at last read
• Lehigh River at Glendon, Pa — 01454700 · RM 0.0
  244 July days of record across 8 Julys (2019–2026) · 1,130 cfs at last read

Public land on the river

17 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 1,076 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Species

PA DEP designates this as trout water — Cold Water Fishes, Trout Stocking — 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

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

• Jordan Creek 40.7 mi · RM 16.2
• Monocacy Creek 19.1 mi · RM 11.4
• Hokendauqua Creek 17.9 mi · RM 22.5
• Saucon Creek 17.4 mi · RM 9.5
• Coplay Creek 16.1 mi · RM 21.0
• Catasauqua Creek 8.1 mi · RM 20.0
• Nancy Run 7.3 mi · RM 8.9
• Bull Run 6.5 mi · RM 6.8
• Dry Run 2.7 mi · RM 22.1

Lehigh River sits in HUC 8 02040106, the Lehigh River basin, and drains 288 square miles, Strahler order 5 at the mouth. 311 NHD reaches carry the name for 114.1 miles in total — more than the 22.5 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.

• Aquashicola Creek 1.2 mi
• Buckwha Creek 1.9 mi
• Indian Creek 4.0 mi
• Lake Creek 4.8 mi
• Middle Creek 5.0 mi
• Pohopoco Creek 5.5 mi