BirdTrout
Bear Creek, Wisconsin
5.1 mapped river miles, draining 24 square miles, in the Kickapoo basin watershed. No gauge stands in it; the nearest is 37.0 miles away, and what this page knows about its temperature is Wisconsin DNR's classification of the water itself.
50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands, breaking at 58, 64 and 70°F, that the app paints. Grey is water nobody has measured.
The nearest live reading
The nearest gauge is 37.0 miles away, at Silver Creek At State Highway 21 Near Angelo, Wi — not a reading of this water, but of what the region is doing today.
The character of the water
The Kickapoo basin's Bear Creek is designated Class II and Class III by Wisconsin DNR, managed as wild supplemented and as stocked, and effectively all of it is typed: 5.2 miles Cold against 2.8 Cool, 8.0 in all against 7.92 NHD miles. The split matters more than the total on a creek this short, and these files cannot say which end each class sits at. There is no gauge in it and no measured temperature. It is 9.1 feet across at the median, fourth order, draining 24.09 square miles over 5.1 miles of mapped axis. No public land in these files fronts it and Wisconsin has no access file, so this page can say nothing about where the bank is open. No named tributary enters it. The Kickapoo River, 134.7 miles long, meets it at the mouth and is much the larger water.
Thermal classification
Wisconsin DNR's classification of this water, reach by reach. A class, not a temperature — no July mean, because none was measured here.
| Reach | Typed miles | Band | Wisconsin DNR type |
|---|---|---|---|
| RM 5.1–3.7 | 1.5 | cold | — |
| RM 3.7–3.7 | 2.8 | cool | — |
| RM 3.7–0.0 | 3.7 | cold | — |
Wisconsin DNR has classified 8.0 of the 7.9 miles NHD carries for this stream — 101% of it. The typed water splits 5.2 mi cold, 2.8 mi cool. The untyped reaches are not warm water — they are water Wisconsin DNR's inventory does not reach, and the mile ranges above span only the reaches it does.
Questions about this river
- Bear Creek fishing report — what it reads right now
- When to fish Bear Creek — hatches, seasons and temperature
- Bear Creek fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
Wisconsin DNR classification
Wisconsin DNR classifies this water as Class II and Class III. More than one class appears because the classification changes along the river. The thermal bar above shows where. The management tier on those reaches is stocked, wild supplemented. This is a designation of the fishery, not the season and creel rules — those change yearly and live with the agency.
WDNR trout stream classification →
Species
Wisconsin DNR designates this as trout water — Class II, Class III — without naming the species. No fish survey or stocking record for this water is in the files this site reads.
Hatches on this water
51 insects are recorded from the Wisconsin driftless, which is the region this river sits in. That is a claim about the region and not a survey of this stream: nobody has recorded which of them has been caught here. Open the river in the app and the hatch panel will narrow it to the ones whose temperature window today's reading is inside.
| Insect | Peak | Water | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fish Eggs Other |
October–January and April | 33–60°F | #10–16 |
| Little Black Stonefly Allocapnia / Capnia spp. |
January–April | 34–46°F | #16–18 |
| Little Brown Stonefly Taeniopteryx / Strophopteryx spp. |
February–April | 38–50°F | #12–16 |
| Blue-Winged Olive Baetis spp. |
March–May and September–November | 38–58°F | #16–22 |
| Blackfly Simulium spp. |
April–June | 40–65°F | #18–22 |
| Blue Quill Paraleptophlebia adoptiva |
April–May | 44–56°F | #16–18 |
| Cranefly Tipula spp. |
April–June and September–October | 40–65°F | #6–10 |
| Grannom Brachycentrus spp. |
April–May | 48–58°F | #14–16 |
| Hendrickson Ephemerella subvaria |
April–May | 45–58°F | #12–14 |
| Little Black Caddis Chimarra atterima |
April–May | 46–58°F | #16–20 |
| Caterpillar Lepidoptera larvae |
May–September | 55–75°F | #8–14 |
| Crayfish Orconectes spp. |
May–October | 55–78°F | #4–8 |
| Inchworm Geometridae |
May–June | 50–68°F | #12–16 |
| Light Cahill Maccaffertium ithaca |
May–July | 55–68°F | #12–16 |
And 37 more — the year-round records, mostly: midges, scuds and sculpins, which are in the water every day and are therefore never the news.
Tributaries and watershed
1 named stream meets this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.
Bear Creek sits in HUC 8 07070006, the Kickapoo basin, and drains 24 square miles, Strahler order 4 at the mouth. 22 NHD reaches carry the name for 7.9 miles in total — more than the 5.1 miles of drawn mainstem, because NHD counts side channels and braids as their own reaches.
Other water nearby
The closest 6 rivers on this site, straight-line from the middle of this one — not drive time.