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Water flow prediction and planning significantly help decision-makers determine the most suitable irrigation strategy and crop type and help avoid risks from flooding, among other benefits. Conventional statistical and physical models are often challenged by the highly dynamic and nonlinear nature of hydrological processes. Recent advances in machine learning (ML), including artificial neural networks (ANNs), provide powerful tools for modeling these complex relationships. However, the performance of these models depends on the optimal parameter tuning. By combining ANN with Crow Search Optimization, we aim to improve prediction accuracy and robustness while providing a clever, adaptable, and reliable solution to real-world water flow forecasting problems. The Crow Search Algorithm (CSA) is one of the most recent metaheuristic algorithms used as a training algorithm for neural network models to achieve higher performance. This research provides an evolutionary-based model to predict the flow of the Black River, a well-known river in the USA. The adopted ANN model was used to train and predict daily flows at the initial Black Water River station (No. 02047500) near Dendron, Virginia. Among the well-known metaheuristic algorithms employed in this study for comparison are the Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and the Dandelion Optimizer (DO). Based on comparative research, the CSA algorithm outperforms other training algorithms in predicting river flow, achieving an average fitness value of 0.0048926, which is 41% better than SSA, 81% better than PSO, and 49% better than DO. Furthermore, CSA has achieved a superior convergence curve, and high variance accounts for VAFs of up to 99.06% on the training data and 98.45% on the test data. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.