BirdTrout

Upper Dan River Watershed, Virginia

1,531 miles of mapped stream across 2,055 square miles of drainage in Patrick, Henry, Pittsylvania, Franklin counties, in 121 named streams. Virginia designates 129 of those miles as trout water, on 47 streams.

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 03010103 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,531 mi
of mapped stream
3,872 NHD reaches
2,055 sq mi
drainage area
1,315,517 acres
5,579 ac
public land
0.4% of the basin · 3 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 1,531); 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 Upper Dan drains 2,055 square miles of Patrick, Henry, Pittsylvania and Franklin counties off the Blue Ridge escarpment into the piedmont, and it is the one Virginia trout basin on this site with no gauge in it at all — nothing here holds a July temperature record, so this page carries no measured water temperature. What it does carry is 129 miles of VDWR-designated trout water on 47 of its 121 named streams, out of 628 mapped miles. The Dan River runs 63.2 miles designated Class II, III and VI; the Smith River 55.5 miles at Class II, III and V; the South Mayo 24.2 at Class II and III, and Rennet Bag Creek 13.8 at Class II. Public ground is 5,579 acres, the least of any Virginia basin here — Fairystone Farms Wildlife Management Area at 5,113 acres and Turkeycock at 466.

Every named stream in the basin

All 121 of them, longest first. 39 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
Dan River 63.2 untyped — Class II, Class III, Class VI
Smith River 55.5 untyped — Class II, Class III, Class V
South Mayo River 24.2 untyped — Class II, Class III
Peters Creek 18.2 untyped — —
Beaver Creek 14.2 untyped — —
Rennet Bag Creek 13.8 untyped — Class II
Blackberry Creek 13.8 untyped — —
Rock Castle Creek 12.6 untyped — Class I, Class III
Elk Creek 10.9 untyped — Class VI
Sycamore Creek 10.9 untyped — —
Little Peters Creek 9.9 untyped — Class VI
Goblintown Creek 8.9 untyped — —
Otter Creek 8.6 untyped — Class V
Polebridge Creek 8.5 untyped — Class III
Little Dan River 8.4 untyped — Class III
Shooting Creek 7.8 untyped — Class II
Poorhouse Creek 7.6 untyped — Class II
Archies Creek 7.5 untyped — —
Hookers Creek 7.4 untyped — Class III
Widgeon Creek 7.4 untyped — Class II
Back Creek 7.1 untyped — Class VI
Laurel Branch 6.7 untyped — —
Little Creek 6.4 untyped — Class VI
Browns Dan River 6.3 untyped — Class VI
Long Branch 6.3 untyped — —
Round Meadow Creek 6.2 untyped — Class III
North Fork Poorhouse Creek 6.1 untyped — —
Spencer Creek 6.1 untyped — Class VI
Poplar Camp Creek 6.0 untyped — —
Jordan Creek 6.0 untyped — —
Anglin Branch 5.9 untyped — —
Grassy Creek 5.8 untyped — —
Buffalo Creek 5.7 untyped — —
Ivy Creek 4.9 untyped — —
Joint Crack Creek 4.8 untyped — —
Bowens Creek 4.8 untyped — —
Sandy Creek 4.6 untyped — —
Grassy Branch 4.6 untyped — —
Conners Creek 4.6 untyped — Class III
Rich Creek 4.5 untyped — Class III
Camp Branch 4.4 untyped — Class III
Rhody Creek 4.4 untyped — Class II
Jacks Creek 4.4 untyped — —
Rock Run 4.4 untyped — —
Rye Cove Creek 4.3 untyped — Class II
Little Sycamore Creek 4.3 untyped — —
Tharp Creek 4.3 untyped — —
Rangeley Creek 4.2 untyped — —
Big Branch 4.1 untyped — —
Jones Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Daniels Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Little Widgeon Creek 3.9 untyped — Class II
North Fork Smith River 3.7 untyped — Class II
Little Goblintown Creek 3.7 untyped — —
Puppy Creek 3.6 untyped — —
North Fork Jones Creek 3.4 untyped — —
Hairston Branch 3.3 untyped — —
White Oak Creek 3.2 untyped — —
Roaring Run 3.2 untyped — Class II
Buttermilk Branch 3.2 untyped — —
Tuggle Creek 3.1 untyped — Class II
Maple Swamp Branch 3.1 untyped — Class II
Ditch Creek 3.0 untyped — Class VI
Bull Mountain Fork 2.9 untyped — —
Fall Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Jill Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Little Beaver Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Big Ivy Creek 2.7 untyped — Class II
Mayberry Creek 2.6 untyped — Class III
Harris Creek 2.6 untyped — Class VI
Brushy Fork 2.6 untyped — Class III
Hale Creek 2.6 untyped — —
Pig Creek 2.4 untyped — —
Pole Branch 2.4 untyped — —
Big Cherry Creek 2.3 untyped — Class II
Whitts Branch 2.3 untyped — —
Silverleaf Creek 2.2 untyped — —
Squirrel Creek 2.2 untyped — —
North Mayo River 2.2 untyped — —
North Prong Smith River 2.2 untyped — Class II
Small Creek 2.2 untyped — —
Roaring Creek 2.1 untyped — Class II
Little Spencer Creek 2.1 untyped — Class VI
Salthouse Branch 2.1 untyped — —
Tanyard Branch 2.1 untyped — —
Shively Branch 2.0 untyped — —
Hurds Branch 2.0 untyped — —
Little Ivy Creek 1.9 untyped — Class III
Haunted Branch 1.9 untyped — Class II
Bonds Branch 1.9 untyped — —
Wilson Creek 1.9 untyped — Class III
Cow Branch 1.9 untyped — —
Preston Branch 1.9 untyped — —
Titus Creek 1.9 untyped — —
Bassett Branch 1.9 untyped — —
Campbell Branch 1.8 untyped — —
Townley Creek 1.8 untyped — —
Spring Branch 1.8 untyped — —
Barnard Creek 1.7 untyped — Class II
Puddin Creek 1.7 untyped — —
Little Rock Castle Creek 1.7 untyped — Class II
Brogan Branch 1.7 untyped — Class II
Squall Creek 1.6 untyped — Class II
Lily Cove Branch 1.6 untyped — Class III
Bowens Branch 1.6 untyped — —
Roland Branch 1.6 untyped — —
Mill Creek 1.4 untyped — —
Ivy Branch 1.4 untyped — —
Rich Run 1.4 untyped — —
Turkeycock Branch 1.4 untyped — —
Green Branch 1.4 untyped — —
Meadows Creek 1.4 untyped — —
Coxes Branch 1.2 untyped — —
Sawpit Branch 1.1 untyped — Class II
Burges Branch 1.1 untyped — —
Waterfall Branch 1.1 untyped — —
Lickskillet Branch 1.0 untyped — —
Quaker Field Branch 0.9 untyped — —
Bent Springs Branch 0.9 untyped — —
Reed Creek 0.5 untyped — —
Town Creek 0.4 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

5,579 acres in 3 units, which is 0.4% of the 1,315,517 acres the basin covers. Private inholdings carried in the same source file are excluded, here and on the map.

Managing agency Acres Share Units
Virginia DWR 5,579 100% 2
Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation 0 0% 1

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
Brown Trout
Salmo trutta
 55–63°F 45–70°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.