BirdTrout

Black Earth Creek, Wisconsin

10.0 mapped river miles, draining 97 square miles, in the Lower Wisconsin basin watershed. A USGS gauge stands in it, but its record is too short for a measured July mean, so what this page knows about its temperature is today's reading and Wisconsin DNR's classification of the water itself.

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Map key

Public land — where the bank is open to walk and fish

USGS gauge — live water temperature

Water temperature — the colour of the river, and of every dot on it

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

This gauge stands in Black Earth Creek. Its record is too short for a July mean, so the class below is Wisconsin DNR's — but the reading is this water.

56.1 °F

Black Earth Creek Nr Brewery Rd At Cross Plains,wi

on this water · 19 cfs · read 30 Sep, 8 am CT

Cold

The character of the water

Black Earth Creek carries Wisconsin DNR's Class I designation and is managed as wild, and the agency has typed 24.1 miles of it as Cold — 78 per cent of its 30.91 NHD miles, with no reach classed anything else. There is no gauge in it, so there is no measured temperature here, only the classification. On the numbers it is a medium stream: 18.4 feet at the median, 97.25 square miles of drainage, fifth order over the ten miles of axis mapped here. Public ground is close-set rather than broad — 473 acres across three blocks, and the largest of them, the Black Earth Creek Fishery Area at 411 acres, fronts only a quarter mile of water. Lions Park and the Walking Iron - Wolf parcel front a little more than that between them. Halfway Prairie Creek enters at river mile 6.6, and the creek runs into Blue Mounds Creek at the mouth.

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 10.0–6.6	24.1	cold	—

Wisconsin DNR has classified 24.1 of the 31 miles NHD carries for this stream — 78% of it. Every typed reach carries the same class, cold. 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.

Named stretches

Anglers name parts of this river. These are the names two or more independent sources use; each page says which sources, because a nickname is the one thing on this site that is not a measurement.

Black Earth Creek — The Dane County spring creek closest to Madison, and the one that carries the heaviest angling pressure in southern Wisconsin — brown trout water with a long restoration history.

Questions about this river

Wisconsin DNR classification

Wisconsin DNR classifies this water as Class I. The management tier on those reaches is wild. 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 →

Public land on the river

3 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 473 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Unit	Owner	Acres
Lions Park	city land	41
Walking Iron - Wolf	county land	21
Black Earth Creek Fishery Area	state natural-resources agency	411

Species

WDNR has stocked brook trout into this water 4 times between 2016 and 2022. That is a stocking record rather than a survey — it says the fish were put in, not that a survey has found them since.

WDNR has stocked brown trout into this water 8 times between 2015 and 2023. That is a stocking record rather than a survey — it says the fish were put in, not that a survey has found them since.

WDNR has stocked rainbow trout into this water 12 times between 2015 and 2024. That is a stocking record rather than a survey — it says the fish were put in, not that a survey has found them since.

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

2 named streams meet this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.

Blue Mounds Creek 12.7 mi · RM 0.0
Halfway Prairie Creek 0.7 mi · RM 6.6

Black Earth Creek sits in HUC 8 07070005, the Lower Wisconsin basin, and drains 97 square miles, Strahler order 5 at the mouth. 29 NHD reaches carry the name for 30.9 miles in total — more than the 10.0 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.