Why there are trout here at all
For decades the upper North Branch was dead water. Maryland DNR describes it as poisoned by acid mine drainage from pre-regulation coal mining until 1993, when lime dosers were installed at several sites to neutralize it. By 1994 fish could live in the river again and the state began stocking trout. Downstream, the Corps of Engineers finished filling Jennings Randolph Lake by 1982, and because the release tower can draw from different depths, the Corps can send out the best-quality water in the lake. That cold, cleaner discharge is what let DNR start a tailwater trout program in the late 1980s.
The result is a river in three pieces: stocked and delayed-harvest water above the lake, a cold tailwater with two catch-and-return reaches below the dam, and a long no-harvest trout reach from Westernport toward Cumberland that also holds smallmouth.
Below the dam: the cable, Barnum and the Blue Hole
The tailwater's special water comes in two pieces. The first starts at an overhead cable and red bank post about 345 yards below the Jennings Randolph spillway and runs about a mile down to a red post roughly 100 yards above the upstream concrete abutments at Barnum, West Virginia. The second starts at a red post below the pool called the Blue Hole and runs about 4 miles down to the mouth of Piney Swamp Run. In both, you may not keep a trout, you fish artificial lures and flies only, no bait or scent, and hooks must be barbless.
DNR says the tailwater is stocked with several thousand trout a year, stays cold all summer, and also supports wild brook and brown trout, with a little rainbow spawning. It is remote and rocky, and the agency's own suggestion is to float it in a raft with a local guide.
Westernport to Pinto, and what the 2026 digest dropped
From the Upper Potomac River Commission wastewater plant discharge at Westernport down to the Route 956 bridge at Pinto, every trout must be released immediately and hooks must be barbless; bait is allowed here, which separates it from the tailwater reaches. DNR describes this as an 18-mile zero-creel area set in 2003, stocked with fingerling browns and rainbows, and reports wild fish as well. The combined cold releases from Jennings Randolph and Savage River Reservoir are what keep it trout water.
Smallmouth were reintroduced below Westernport in 1993 and were reproducing by 1997, and a catch-and-release bass area from Keyser, West Virginia to Cumberland was set in 2001. Check your old notes: the 2026 Maryland digest removed that reach from its catch-and-release bass list, so statewide bass rules now apply, including release of all bass from March 1 to June 15. A 2026 Maryland trout stamp costs $20 for residents and $30 for nonresidents on top of the license, and the statewide trout limit outside special areas is two a day.
Above the lake: Potomac State Forest delayed harvest
Upstream of Jennings Randolph, DNR stocks about 21 miles: roughly 14 under put-and-take rules and about 7 inside Potomac State Forest under delayed harvest. The delayed-harvest boundaries run from the lower Potomac State Forest line near Lostland Run up to the upper line at Wallman. From October 1 to June 15 it is catch and release with artificials and barbless hooks; from June 16 to September 30 you may keep five trout a day with no tackle limits. Much of it is reached only on foot, and DNR stocks remote stretches from a tank truck that rides the CSX rails.
What Luke reads, and why it is not the dam
The Luke gauge sits at Luke, beside Westernport and below the Savage River confluence, so it measures dam release plus the Savage, not the tailwater alone. Its long-term monthly means run about 1,430 cfs in March and 1,160 in April, then 570 in June and roughly 330 to 370 cfs from July through September. In the three weeks before September 24, 2026 it ran 320 to 589 cfs. No shop publishes a wading number for Luke, so the 300 to 600 cfs band on this page is taken from that late-summer and early-fall record, when the tailwater is at its lowest and most wadeable.
Release schedules come from the Corps' Baltimore District, which this guide could not retrieve online; if a sudden rise shows on the Luke gauge with no rain upstream, assume the dam has opened and stay off the gravel bars in the tailwater. The Kitzmiller gauge upstream of the lake tells you what the delayed-harvest water is doing.
Bugs for a cold eastern tailwater
No one publishes a dated hatch chart for the North Branch. The table uses a mid-Atlantic freestone chart for timing: midges all winter, blue-winged olives in spring and fall, Hendricksons in April, caddis and sulphurs from May, Isonychia into September.