BirdTrout

Rifle River State Recreation Area, Michigan

4,480 acres of public ground in Ogemaw county, managed by Michigan DNR. 7 named streams run through it, of which 7 are designated trout water — 106.1 miles of it.

Open in BirdTrout
Map key
This unit — the ground this page is about
Other public land — state, federal and county ground around it
USGS gauge — a gauge, coloured by what it reads now
Water temperature — the colour of every stream on this ground

50°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 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.

4,480 ac
public ground
7.0 square miles · one block
Michigan DNR
managing agency
Protected Area
7
named streams on it
106.1 miles · 7 designated trout
Open access
public access
as recorded in the ownership file

Getting on it

Open to the public on foot without a permit, as the ownership file records it.

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. 7 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
Rifle River 68.0 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Vaughn Creek 11.3 untyped — Type 2
Houghton Creek 9.5 Cold — Type 2
Gamble Creek 6.0 Cold — Type 2
Oyster Creek 5.6 Cold — Type 2
Skunk Creek 3.4 Cool — Type 2
Clear Creek 2.3 Cool — Type 2

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

5boat launches
3canoe and kayak launches
0walk-in access points
0sites whose name says campground
Site Kind Water On it
Devoe Lake Boat launch Devoe Lake parking (4 spaces), 1 trailer ramp · fee
Grebe Lake Boat launch Grebe Lake parking (3 spaces), 1 trailer ramp, fishing pier, accessible features · fee
Grousehaven Lake Boat launch Grousehaven Lake parking (10 spaces), restroom, 1 trailer ramp, accessible features · fee
Jewett Lake Boat launch Jewett Lake parking (2 spaces), 1 trailer ramp · fee
Lodge Lake Boat launch Lodge Lake parking (3 spaces), 1 trailer ramp · fee
Headwaters Canoe and kayak launch Rifle River parking (1 space), carry-down launch · fee
Sage Lake Road Canoe and kayak launch Rifle River parking (3 spaces), restroom, carry-down launch · fee
The Ranch Canoe and kayak launch Rifle River parking (6 spaces), carry-down launch · fee

No access site on this unit has campground in its name. We have no campground data, so that is the whole of what this page can say about camping here — it is not evidence that there is none.

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.

December

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.

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.

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.