BirdTrout
Au Sable State Forest - Gladwin Unit, Michigan
95,964 acres of public ground in Clare, Arenac, Midland, Iosco counties, managed by Michigan DNR. 57 named streams run through it, of which 31 are designated trout water — 770.3 miles of it.
Open in BirdTrout50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands the app paints. The colour is MDNR's classification of the valley segment, not a measurement, except at the gauge dots, which read live. Grey is water MDNR has not typed.
The unit in numbers
Assembled from MDNR and OSM ownership records, dissolved into one block: the section lines a state forest is surveyed in are not a fact about access, so they are not drawn and not counted twice.
Getting on it
Open to the public on foot without a permit, as the ownership file records it.
This unit is 172 separate blocks of ground rather than one, which is normal for public land held in surveyed sections: the blocks are not contiguous. The map above draws every one of them, and the ground between two of them belongs to somebody else. Boundaries, closures and anything posted on the ground are Michigan Department of Natural Resources's to say, and 517-284-6057 is where to ask.
Trout streams on this ground
Every named stream whose reaches touch this unit, longest first. 23 of them have a page of their own and are linked; the rest are in the app. Thermal class is MDNR's classification of the valley segment, over the reaches it has typed. "Now" is the live USGS reading where a gauge stands in that stream.
| Stream | Miles | Class | Now | Designation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muskegon River | 231.0 | Cool | 61.3°F | Type 1, Type 2, Type 4 |
| Chippewa River | 91.8 | Warm | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Rifle River | 68.0 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2, Type 4 |
| Clam River Blue Ribbon | 51.1 | Cool | — | Type 2, Type 3 |
| North Branch Chippewa River | 50.3 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Au Gres River | 46.7 | Warm | — | Type 2 |
| Salt Creek | 36.9 | Warm | — | Type 1 |
| Green Creek | 22.0 | Cool | — | — |
| Little Salt Creek | 21.6 | Warm | — | Type 1 |
| Big Creek | 21.5 | Warm | — | Type 2 |
| East Branch Au Gres River | 18.8 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2, Type 3 |
| Bush Creek | 16.3 | Warm | — | — |
| Johnson Creek | 16.1 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| North Branch Pine River | 14.6 | Cool | — | — |
| Doc and Tom Creek | 13.2 | Cool | — | — |
| West Branch Clam River | 12.9 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Town Line Creek | 11.9 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Sand Creek | 11.4 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Dishwash Creek | 10.0 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Elm Creek | 8.7 | Cool | — | — |
| Wells Creek | 8.7 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Saverine Creek | 8.6 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Saddler Creek | 8.4 | Warm | — | — |
| Kawkawlin Creek | 7.4 | untyped | — | — |
| Whisky Creek | 7.4 | Cold-transitional | — | Type 2 |
| Norway Creek | 6.9 | Cool | — | — |
| Cranberry Creek | 6.1 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Floodwood Creek | 6.1 | Cool | — | — |
| Townline Creek | 5.9 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Mongo Creek | 5.6 | Cool | — | — |
| Halford Creek | 5.5 | Cool | — | — |
| Bear Creek Blue Ribbon | 5.0 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Prestle Creek | 4.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Turkey Creek | 4.7 | untyped | — | — |
| Plains Creek | 4.4 | Cool | — | — |
| Townline Creek | 4.2 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Sherrit Drain | 4.1 | Warm | — | — |
| Alabaster Whitney Drain | 4.0 | untyped | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| South Branch Town Line Creek | 3.9 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Giss-I-Was Creek | 3.7 | Cold | — | Type 2 |
| North Branch Townline Creek | 3.6 | untyped | — | — |
| Duck Lake Drain | 3.4 | Warm | — | — |
| Three Lake Creek | 3.4 | Cool | — | — |
| Little Norway Creek | 3.3 | untyped | — | — |
| Parent Drain | 3.3 | untyped | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Wright Drain | 3.3 | untyped | — | — |
| Kelchner Drain | 3.2 | Warm | — | — |
| South Branch Townline Creek | 3.1 | untyped | — | — |
| Burch Creek | 3.0 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| McMullen Drain | 2.3 | Cool | — | Type 1, Type 2 |
| Chubb Drain | 2.2 | untyped | — | — |
| Grey Creek | 2.1 | Cool | — | — |
| Herner Drain | 1.9 | untyped | — | — |
| Parmalee Creek | 1.8 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Cursten Creek | 1.2 | Cool | — | Type 2 |
| Hettinger Creek | 1.2 | untyped | — | Type 2 |
| Thrasher Creek | 1.2 | untyped | — | — |
The miles are the whole stream's, not the miles inside this boundary: a river does not stop at a property line and neither does its page.
Hunting
This unit is not in the huntable public-land layer this app paints, so this page does not publish seasons for it. That is not the same as "hunting is closed here" — it means the layer the app draws from does not carry this ground, and the managing agency is the one to ask.
Access sites and amenities
| Site | Kind | Water | On it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mud Lake State Forest Campground camping | Boat launch | Big Mud Lake | parking (3 spaces), 1 trailer ramp · free |
| Long Lake | Boat launch | Long Lake | parking (14 spaces), restroom, 1 trailer ramp, accessible features · fee |
| Clam River | Canoe and kayak launch | Clam River | parking (3 spaces), carry-down launch · fee |
| Stoddard's Landing | Canoe and kayak launch | Rifle River | parking (55 spaces), carry-down launch · fee |
When to come
The hatch calendar for northern lower Michigan, which is the region this unit's centre falls in — the same regions the app's hatch panel uses. It is a regional record, not a survey of this ground: nobody has counted insects unit by unit. Year-round records (midges, scuds, sculpins) are left out.
January
April
May
- Blue-Winged Olive
- Blackfly
- Blue Quill
- Cranefly
- +15 more
June
July
- Caterpillar
- Crayfish
- Green Sedge
- Light Cahill
- +20 more
August
September
October
November
December
What makes this unit distinctive
The Gladwin Unit is 95,964 acres in Clare, Arenac, Midland, Iosco and Gladwin counties, in 172 blocks, and it sits lower and further south than the rest of the Au Sable State Forest — which shows in the water. Fifty-seven named streams touch it but only thirty-one are designated trout water, the lowest proportion of any large unit here, though those thirty-one still carry 770.3 miles. Bear Creek and the Clam River are the Blue Ribbon streams. The Muskegon at 231 miles and the Chippewa at 91.8 are the long rivers crossing it; MDNR types the Chippewa warm and the Muskegon, the Rifle and the Clam cool. Four access sites stand on the unit, one of them named campground. The unit is not in the state's huntable-land layer, which is a gap in that file rather than a closure.
Regulations
Nothing on this page is a regulation. The fishing rules that apply to the water on this ground — the types, the seasons, the size limits and the gear restrictions — are on the Michigan fishing regulations page, built from the agency's own columns.
Watersheds it lies in
The subbasins this ground drains into. Each one has the whole basin's water on it.
- Au Gres-Rifle
- Kawkawlin-Pine
- Muskegon
- Pine
Public land nearby
The nearest other blocks of public ground, centre to centre. Public land does not tile a state the way watersheds do, so this is nearness rather than adjacency.
- Gladwin State Game Area 4.9 mi
- Molasses River Flooding No.1 State Wildlife Management Area 14.0 mi
- Molasses River Flooding No.5 State Wildlife Management Area 14.5 mi
- Townline Creek Flooding State Wildlife Management Area 15.7 mi
- Bentley Marsh Flooding State Wildlife Management Area 15.7 mi
Plan a weekend around it
The trip pages whose range reaches this ground — the water in the same drive, what is hatching, and a three-day plan built from it.