BirdTrout
Watauga River Watershed, North Carolina
753 miles of mapped stream across 868 square miles of drainage in Watauga, Avery counties, in 99 named streams. North Carolina designates 42 of those miles as trout water, on 15 streams.
Open in BirdTrout50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands the app paints. On this map the colour is NC Wildlife Resources Commission's own classification of the stream, not a measurement, except at the gauge dots, which read live. Grey is water NC Wildlife Resources Commission has not typed.
The watershed in numbers
HUC8 06010103 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.
Cold, cool and warm water
North Carolina publishes a trout water designation and a wild-or-stocked tier, and no thermal class this page can read. It covers 0% of this basin's stream miles (0.0 of 753); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.
North Carolina publishes no thermal classification of its streams that we could read, so this page has no cold/cool/warm breakdown. The live map colours North Carolina water from an air-temperature model at the moment you open it; the designations below are NCWRC's own and are the harder fact.
What makes this watershed distinctive
The Watauga drains 868 square miles of Watauga and Avery counties off the Grandfather Mountain massif and out into Tennessee, and it is the thinnest of North Carolina's mountain basins on this site by both water and ground: 42 designated miles on 15 of 99 named streams, and 2,443 acres of public land — less than any other basin here, and almost all of it Pisgah National Forest at 2,224 acres. The Elk River runs 29.1 miles and carries both a Catch and Release, artificial-flies-and-lures section and Hatchery Supported water; the Watauga River's own 26.8 miles are Delayed Harvest, and Cove Creek at 13.7 miles and Beech Creek at 7.8 are Hatchery Supported. That is a basin whose trout fishing is largely on private ground with public access at the designated stretches. No gauge here holds a July record.
Every named stream in the basin
All 99 of them, longest first. 9 have a page of their own and are linked; the rest are in the app. The class column is NC Wildlife Resources Commission's designation of that stream. "Now" is the live USGS reading where a gauge stands in that stream.
| Stream | Miles | Class | Now | Designation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elk River | 29.1 | untyped | — | Catch and Release/Artificial Flies and Lures Only Trout Waters, Hatchery Supported Trout Waters |
| Watauga River | 26.8 | untyped | — | Delayed Harvest Trout Waters |
| Cove Creek | 13.7 | untyped | — | Hatchery Supported Trout Waters |
| Beech Creek | 7.8 | untyped | — | Hatchery Supported Trout Waters |
| Little Beaverdam Creek | 6.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Beaverdam Creek | 6.1 | untyped | — | Hatchery Supported Trout Waters |
| Laurel Creek | 5.9 | untyped | — | Hatchery Supported Trout Waters |
| Dutch Creek | 5.8 | untyped | — | Hatchery Supported Trout Waters, Wild Trout Waters |
| Big Dry Run | 5.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Brushy Fork | 5.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Laurel Fork | 5.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Buckeye Creek | 5.0 | untyped | — | Hatchery Supported Trout Waters |
| Cranberry Creek | 4.8 | untyped | — | Wild Trout Waters |
| Craborchard Creek | 4.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Rube Creek | 4.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Laurel Branch | 3.9 | untyped | — | — |
| Heaton Branch | 3.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Gregg Branch | 3.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Little Elk Creek | 3.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Trivett Branch | 3.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Morgan Branch | 3.3 | untyped | — | — |
| Blevins Creek | 3.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Baker Branch | 3.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Shawneehaw Creek | 3.1 | untyped | — | Wild Trout Waters |
| Skalley Branch | 3.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Phillips Branch | 3.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Baird Creek | 3.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Row Branch | 3.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Vanderpool Creek | 3.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Nowhere Branch | 2.9 | untyped | — | — |
| Forest Grove Creek | 2.9 | untyped | — | — |
| Curtis Creek | 2.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Black Branch | 2.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Pigeonroost Creek | 2.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Worley Creek | 2.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Jones Branch | 2.7 | untyped | — | Wild Trout Waters |
| Little Laurel Branch | 2.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Sharp Creek | 2.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Bunton Creek | 2.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Stone Mountain Branch | 2.6 | untyped | — | — |
| Poga Creek | 2.6 | untyped | — | — |
| North Fork Cove Creek | 2.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Clark Creek | 2.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Hanging Rock Creek | 2.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Leroy Creek | 2.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Sawyer Creek | 2.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Pond Creek | 2.4 | untyped | — | Catch and Release/Artificial Flies and Lures Only Trout Waters |
| North Fork Sawyer Creek | 2.3 | untyped | — | — |
| Whitehead Creek | 2.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Greenbrier Creek | 2.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Fall Creek | 2.2 | untyped | — | Wild Trout Waters |
| East Fork Cove Creek | 2.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Draught Creek | 2.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Horney Branch | 2.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Upper Laurel Fork | 2.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Asher Branch | 2.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Dye Leaf Branch | 2.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Mill Creek | 1.9 | untyped | — | Hatchery Supported Trout Waters, Wild Trout Waters |
| Linville Creek | 1.9 | untyped | — | — |
| Rush Branch | 1.9 | untyped | — | — |
| Cooper Branch | 1.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Scrawls Branch | 1.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Big Branch | 1.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Hayes Branch | 1.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Wildcat Creek | 1.7 | untyped | — | — |
| South Fork Ellison Branch | 1.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Flat Springs Branch | 1.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Sugar Creek | 1.6 | untyped | — | — |
| Horse Bottom Creek | 1.6 | untyped | — | — |
| George Gap Branch | 1.6 | untyped | — | — |
| Grassy Gap Creek | 1.6 | untyped | — | — |
| Bearwallow Branch | 1.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Lunsford Branch | 1.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Kirby Branch | 1.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Fork Branch | 1.5 | untyped | — | — |
| West Fork Rube Creek | 1.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Pine Bottom Branch | 1.5 | untyped | — | — |
| Flattop Creek | 1.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Clingman Mine Branch | 1.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Tom Baker Branch | 1.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Long Branch | 1.3 | untyped | — | — |
| Harrison Branch | 1.3 | untyped | — | — |
| Lipford Branch | 1.3 | untyped | — | — |
| Bee Branch | 1.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Peavine Branch | 1.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Puckett Branch | 1.1 | untyped | — | — |
| North Fork Ellison Branch | 1.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Lost Branch | 1.1 | untyped | — | Delayed Harvest Trout Waters |
| Spice Branch | 1.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Lee Branch | 1.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Ellison Branch | 1.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Sawmill Branch | 1.0 | untyped | — | — |
| Ramp Branch | 0.9 | untyped | — | — |
| Miller Branch | 0.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Sugar Hollow Branch | 0.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Bear Branch | 0.8 | untyped | — | — |
| Rich Gap Branch | 0.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Cannon Branch | 0.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Cornett Branch | 0.6 | untyped | — | — |
Public land in the watershed
2,443 acres in 5 units, which is 0.4% of the 555,737 acres the basin covers. Private inholdings carried in the same source file are excluded, here and on the map.
| Managing agency | Acres | Share | Units |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Forest Service | 2,246 | 92% | 2 |
| Owner not recorded | 197 | 8% | 1 |
| NC Division of Parks and Recreation | 0 | 0% | 2 |
The biggest named blocks of it, each with its own page — the streams on that ground, what is open to hunt on it, and where the access sites are.
- Pisgah National Forest 510,983 ac
- Elk Knob Game Land 716 ac
- Cherokee National Forest 451 ac
- Bear Paw State Natural Area 384 ac
- Beech Creek State Natural Area 311 ac
Best time to fish
The hatch calendar for the North Carolina mountains, which is the region this basin's centre falls in — the same regions the app's hatch panel uses. It is a regional record, not a survey of this watershed: nobody has counted insects basin by basin. Year-round records (midges, scuds, sculpins) are left out; they are true every month and they are not what a calendar is for.
January
May
- Blue-Winged Olive
- Blackfly
- Blue Quill
- Cranefly
- +17 more
June
July
- Caterpillar
- Crayfish
- Green Sedge
- Light Cahill
- +18 more
August
September
October
November
December
Nothing seasonal on the water.
52 insects are recorded from the North Carolina mountains. Each links to its own page, with the flies that imitate it.
Neighbouring watersheds
The subbasins that share a boundary with this one and carry coldwater streams.