The Savage runs out of the Corps dam up in Garrett County and falls hard toward the Potomac at Bloomington, and in those three-odd miles of pocket water and plunge pools it hides as good a population of wild browns and brook trout as Maryland has. It's a tailwater, so the trout don't much care what the weather's been doing — they care what the dam's doing, and the release can flip the river from a wadeable trickle to a shouldering torrent inside an afternoon. Cold, tumbling, boulder-strewn freestone-in-character water with a special-reg reach that asks you to pinch the barbs and put them back. Watch the release schedule, fish the seams behind the rocks, and don't wade where you can't see your boots.
- Mixed metamorphic