Despite advances in watershed hydrology research, little is known about the hydrologic differences and similarities between neighboring catchments. Two neighboring catchments, the Nanliu River catchment (NLRC) and the Qinjiang River catchment (QJRC), were studied to see how they differed in annual precipitation, runoff, and sediment load in the last 60 years. Four hydrological signatures (river regime, periodicity, change trends, and precipitation-runoff-sediment correlations) estimated from a wide variety of catchment classification and corresponding indices, such as the runoff ratio (RQP) and baseflow index (BFI). The findings revealed that the two catchments shared similar general features, including similar runoff patterns (RQP= 0.45 and 0.43, and BFI = 2.83% and 2.12% in NLRC and QJRC respectively), minor differences in periodicities, and similar annual precipitation, runoff, and sediment load changes. The annual sediment load has been steadily decreasing due to human activity. The simple precipitation-runoff regression model developed in one catchment can be transferred to another. Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) coefficients were 0.79 and 0.62, respectively. The runoff-sediment load regression model, on the other hand, showed poor performance (NSE of −0.34 and −0.99, respectively), despite capturing the main patterns with correlation coefficients of 0.82 (p < 0.001) and 0.74 (p < 0.001), respectively. These findings suggested that (1) annual runoff ratios are influenced more by climate (particularly precipitation) than by surface and subsurface characteristics of the earth. The rainfall-runoff model for the neighboring catchment can recreate runoff dynamics at yearly scales. Human activities, such as dam construction and sand mining, significantly impacted the annual sediment yield. (2) The two neighboring catchments had similar hydrologic ages because of similar climate, geology, tectonics, and human disturbance. These findings provided a solid evidence for predicting runoff and sediment in ungauged basins.