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Driftless Area Fishing Report

Measured · 10 gauges reporting · 3:23 PM EDT on September 28, 2026

The unglaciated coulee country — spring creeks, limestone, and more trout stream per square mile than anywhere in the Midwest.

Right now

Driftless Area water is running 58–65°F across 10 gauges reporting in the last 6 hours. 9 are in prime shape — Silver Creek at 58°F, La Crosse River at 58°F, Black Earth Creek at 59°F, and others below. One sits in the 64–70°F transitional band, where the fish are catchable early and should be left alone by mid-afternoon. Air holds in the 70s through Thu, and water should hold about where it is, and 1.5″ of rain in the window will bump flows and cool the freestones.

Every temperature behind the clock on this page is a measurement — USGS water temperature at a real gauge, taken within 6 hours of the reading's own hour. Hours ahead of the last measurement are projected from the hourly air forecast and are labelled as projected. That is also why the lists below are only as long as the gauge network is dense — a river with no gauge on it has nothing measured to report.

Data refreshed nightly, current-hour rendered live — this page carries 24 hours of measured water behind 3:23 PM EDT on September 28, 2026 and 48 ahead of it, and shows the hour you are reading it in.

Streams by condition

The bands are the map's own: the same breaks BirdTrout paints water with, so a stream that is green here is green there.

Hatching right now

The bugs whose peak covers this month in Driftless, with the water temperature each is active in. Peak only — a shoulder month is on the bug's own page.

• Other · Aquatic Worm Oligochaeta · size 10–16 · active 35–70°F
  Segmented worms in the silt, dislodged in quantity every time the river comes up. Not a hatch and not glamorous, but the single most reliable thing to fish in high dirty water in any of these states.
• Terrestrial · Black Ant Formicidae · size 14–20 · active 55–80°F
  Sinks, so fish it in the film or just under. The most reliable summer fly on small, brushy water.
• Mayfly · Blue-Winged Olive Baetis spp. · size 16–22 · active 38–58°F
  Two broods a year, spring and fall, and the worse the weather the better the hatch. Grey, drizzling, 45°F is the day.
• Terrestrial · Caterpillar Lepidoptera larvae · size 8–14 · active 55–75°F
  Tent caterpillars, woolly bears and spongy-moth larvae, all of which fall off overhanging hardwood in quantity. Distinct from the inchworm only in size and in that they sink; a caterpillar that has been in the water a minute is fished under the surface, not on it.
• Terrestrial · Cinnamon Flying Ant Formicidae (alate) · size 16–20 · active 58–78°F
  A humid, still late-summer afternoon puts them on the water by the thousand. Unpredictable, and the best fishing of August when it happens.

Next three days

Air holds in the 70s through Thu, and water should hold about where it is, and 1.5″ of rain in the window will bump flows and cool the freestones.

Air, not water. Water follows smoothed air with a sensitivity well below one — a spring creek barely feels a hot afternoon and a shallow freestone nearly tracks it — so this table is a direction, and the measurements above are the answer.

What the water is classed as

4,432 classified stream miles in Driftless, by WDNR trout classification. This is the standing classification, not today's temperature — it is what the water is normally, which is the context the readings above sit in.

More water in Driftless

Rivers here with a full BirdTrout page — survey history, access, public land and regulations — whether or not a gauge is reporting on them this hour.

• Allen Creek
• Amo Creek
• Apple Branch
• Ash Creek
• Bailey Creek
• Baker Creek
• Baraboo River
• Basswood Creek
• Bear Creek
• Bear Creek
• Bear Creek
• Beaver Creek
• Beaver Creek
• Beaver Creek
• Big Creek
• Big Creek
• Big Rock Branch
• Big Slough

Before you go

Other regions

• Lake Superior
• Central Sand Plain
• Northwoods

Other states

• Michigan
• Virginia
• North Carolina
• Minnesota
• Pennsylvania
• Ohio
• New York
• West Virginia

See this water on the map →Every reach coloured by today's water temperature, starting at the coldest reading in this report.