BirdTrout

North Fork Shenandoah River Watershed, Virginia

1,691 miles of mapped stream across 1,034 square miles of drainage in Shenandoah, Rockingham, Frederick, Warren counties, in 113 named streams. Virginia designates 93 of those miles as trout water, on 38 streams. The 4 mainstem gauges with a July record read between 70.6 and 82.1°F in July.

Open in BirdTrout
Map key
Public land — where the bank is open to walk and fish
USGS gauge — live water temperature
Water temperature — the colour of every stream in the basin

50°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 Virginia DWR's own classification of the stream, not a measurement, except at the gauge dots, which read live. Grey is water Virginia DWR has not typed.

The watershed in numbers

HUC8 02070006 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,691 mi
of mapped stream
4,580 NHD reaches
1,034 sq mi
drainage area
661,675 acres
70.6–82.1°F
July water temperature at the gauges
4 mainstem gauges, mean 76.7°F
183,694 ac
public land
27.8% of the basin · 2 units

Cold, cool and warm water

Virginia publishes stockability classes and a wild-or-stocked tier for its trout water, and no thermal class this page can read. It covers 0% of this basin's stream miles (0.0 of 1,691); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

Virginia publishes no thermal classification of its streams that we could read, so this page has no cold/cool/warm breakdown. The live map colours Virginia water from an air-temperature model at the moment you open it; the designations below are VDWR's own and are the harder fact.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The North Fork Shenandoah is the smaller of the two Shenandoah forks — 1,034 square miles, 608 mapped stream miles, 113 named streams — and it is dominated by Massanutten and Great North Mountain: 183,558 of its 183,694 public acres are George Washington National Forest. VDWR designates 93 miles of trout water on 38 streams, filed as wild and stocked-holdover. The mainstem runs 45.6 miles; Passage Creek, which drains the Fort valley between the two Massanutten ridges, runs 38.9 miles and carries a Class VI designation, and Cedar Creek runs 36.9 miles at Class III. Four gauges hold a July record and they read between 70.6 and 82.1°F — the widest spread of any Virginia basin here, and a plain statement that the trout water is in the tributaries off the mountain rather than in the valley river the gauges sit on.

Every named stream in the basin

All 113 of them, longest first. 30 have a page of their own and are linked; the rest are in the app. The class column is Virginia DWR's designation of that stream. "Now" is the live USGS reading where a gauge stands in that stream.

Stream Miles Class Now Designation
North Fork Shenandoah River 45.6 untyped — —
Passage Creek 38.9 untyped — Class VI
Cedar Creek 36.9 untyped — Class III
Stony Creek 30.7 untyped — Class V
Smith Creek 18.9 untyped — Class V
German River 15.7 untyped — Class IV
Narrow Passage Creek 11.6 untyped — —
Little Dry River 11.5 untyped — —
Shoemaker River 11.5 untyped — —
Dry Fork 9.3 untyped — —
Peters Mill Run 8.7 untyped — Class VI
Laurel Run 8.2 untyped — Class II
Capon Run 8.1 untyped — —
Riles Run 8.1 untyped — —
Buffalo Marsh Run 8.1 untyped — —
Pughs Run 8.0 untyped — —
War Branch 7.9 untyped — —
Slate Lick Branch 7.4 untyped — Class IV
Mountain Run 7.4 untyped — Class VI
Painter Run 7.4 untyped — —
Swover Creek 7.3 untyped — —
Fall Run 7.2 untyped — —
Hollow Run 7.0 untyped — —
Meadow Brook 7.0 untyped — Class V
Bennett Run 6.9 untyped — —
Little Stony Creek 6.9 untyped — Class II
Crab Run 6.8 untyped — —
Furnace Run 6.7 untyped — —
Duck Run 6.6 untyped — Class II
Bible Run 6.5 untyped — Class III
Little Passage Creek 6.2 untyped — Class III
Turkey Run 5.9 untyped — —
Long Run 5.8 untyped — Class IV
Marshall Run 5.6 untyped — Class IV
Sirks Run 5.1 untyped — Class IV
Cold Spring Run 5.0 untyped — —
Stony Run 5.0 untyped — —
Mulberry Run 5.0 untyped — —
Falls Run 4.9 untyped — Class VI
Lairs Run 4.6 untyped — —
Turner Run 4.5 untyped — —
Overly Run 4.4 untyped — —
Beetle Run 4.3 untyped — —
Hogpen Run 4.2 untyped — —
Spruce Run 4.1 untyped — Class III, Class IV
Mine Run 4.0 untyped — Class III
Cold Spring River 3.8 untyped — —
Pifer Run 3.8 untyped — —
Reedy Run 3.7 untyped — —
Spring Run 3.5 untyped — Class IV
Buck Lick Run 3.3 untyped — —
Gravel Springs Run 3.3 untyped — —
Mill Run 3.3 untyped — Class II
Edinburg Run 3.1 untyped — —
Cove Run 3.1 untyped — —
Martin Lick Run 3.0 untyped — —
Brushy Run 3.0 untyped — —
Seventy Buck Lick Run 3.0 untyped — Class IV
Foltz Creek 3.0 untyped — Class III
Shell Run 3.0 untyped — —
Fowlers Run 3.0 untyped — —
Stickley Run 3.0 untyped — —
Rinker Run 2.9 untyped — —
Alum Run 2.9 untyped — —
Saltpeter Run 2.9 untyped — —
Rader Run 2.7 untyped — —
Gate Run 2.7 untyped — Class VIII
Carr Run 2.7 untyped — —
Barb Run 2.7 untyped — —
Watson Run 2.7 untyped — —
Middle Marsh Brook 2.7 untyped — —
Mill Creek 2.6 untyped — Class III
Millers Run 2.5 untyped — —
Siever Run 2.4 untyped — —
Fridley Run 2.4 untyped — —
Sugar Run 2.3 untyped — —
Bear Run 2.3 untyped — Class III
Poplar Run 2.3 untyped — Class II
May Spring Run 2.3 untyped — —
Buck Run 2.3 untyped — —
Persimmon Run 2.2 untyped — —
Root Run 2.2 untyped — Class IV
Kelly Run 2.2 untyped — —
Teams Hollow Run 2.1 untyped — —
Eishelman Run 2.1 untyped — —
Spruce Lick Run 2.0 untyped — Class III
Mud Run 2.0 untyped — —
Yellow Spring Run 2.0 untyped — —
Rattlesnake Run 1.9 untyped — Class IV
Blue Lick Run 1.9 untyped — —
Little Hogpen Run 1.8 untyped — —
Anderson Run 1.8 untyped — Class II
Rocky Run 1.8 untyped — —
Sumac Run 1.7 untyped — Class IV
Beech Lick Run 1.7 untyped — Class IV
Mud Lick Run 1.6 untyped — —
Black Lick Run 1.6 untyped — —
Mikes Run 1.6 untyped — —
Richards Run 1.6 untyped — Class II
North Fork Camp Rader Run 1.5 untyped — —
Cross Mountain Run 1.5 untyped — —
Dry Run 1.5 untyped — —
Camp Rader Run 1.4 untyped — Class II
Zanes Run 1.4 untyped — —
Paint Lick Run 1.3 untyped — Class IV
Bull Run 1.3 untyped — Class III
Bean Run 1.3 untyped — —
Hockmans Run 1.2 untyped — —
South Fork Camp Rader Run 1.0 untyped — —
Swamp Run 0.9 untyped — —
Lick Run 0.8 untyped — —
Indian Run 0.7 untyped — —
Fawcett Run 0.5 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

183,694 acres in 2 units, which is 27.8% of the 661,675 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 183,694 100% 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.

Species present

Recorded by VDWR on the reaches it has classified, per stream. The temperature ranges are our own species table and are the same numbers the app's picker uses.

Species Best water Tolerates Evidence
Brook Trout
Salvelinus fontinalis
 50–60°F 42–65°F surveyed
Rainbow Trout
Oncorhynchus mykiss
 55–64°F 44–70°F surveyed

Best time to fish

The hatch calendar for the Virginia 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

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Nothing seasonal on the water.

56 insects are recorded from the Virginia 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.