BirdTrout
Peshtigo River, Wisconsin
23 mapped river miles, draining 473 square miles, in the Peshtigo basin watershed. 1 USGS gauge report water temperature on it, and this page reads 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.
Water temperature right now
Live from the USGS — every pill above is live, so the numbers you are reading are the latest continuous readings at each gauge. Provisional and unreviewed, as all real-time data is. If that fetch cannot happen — you are offline, or the USGS is down — the pills fall back to the last value we cached, 30 September 2026, 13:46 UTC.
The character of the water
The Peshtigo is Class II water under Wisconsin DNR and managed as wild supplemented, fifth order, 26 feet across at the median, draining 472.91 square miles over the 22.8 miles of axis mapped here out of 118.69 in all. The gauge at Peshtigo sits at the mouth and has six Julys on record between 2019 and 2026: the mean is 75.5 °F and the range across those years is 15.5 degrees, on water the model reads as low-groundwater. That gauge stands at the bottom of its reach and reads the warmest water in it, so everything upstream is colder — but 75.5 °F at the bottom is the number to plan a July around. Two blocks of public ground front the river, 13,274 acres between them, and 7.32 of the mapped miles run inside the Governor Earl Peshtigo River State Forest. Medicine Brook comes in near the head at river mile 21.7.
Thermal classification
Each gauge carries a July mean built from its own daily record — 6 Julys, 2019–2026, measured rather than modelled. A July mean is what decides which of the four bands a stretch of water belongs to, because July is when a trout river either holds or does not.
| Reach | July mean | Band | Groundwater |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Peshtigo RM 22.8–0.0 |
75.5 °F | warm | low |
Every gauge sits at the bottom of its segment, so each number is the warm end and the water above it runs colder. ±2.42 °F on the fit.
The lake run
The Peshtigo River is a Lake Michigan tributary with 9.4 miles of run corridor on it — salmon, steelhead and lake-run brown trout, on their own calendar and under their own rules. Run timing, species and access on the Peshtigo River →
Questions about this river
- Peshtigo River fishing report — what it reads right now
- When to fish the Peshtigo River — hatches, seasons and temperature
- How to get to the Peshtigo River — access, parking and public land
- Peshtigo River fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
- Is the Peshtigo River good for brook trout?
- Is the Peshtigo River good for brown trout?
- Is the Peshtigo River good for rainbow trout?
Wisconsin DNR classification
Wisconsin DNR classifies this water as Class II. The management tier on those reaches is 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 →
Fishable reaches
River miles are measured above the mouth, along the mapped mainstem. The reach breaks are the gauges, which is also how the temperature model divides the river.
| Reach | Miles | July mean | Access on it |
|---|---|---|---|
|
RM 22.8–0.0 down to Peshtigo |
137.3 | 75.5 °F | — |
0 mapped access sites on the mainstem: 0 walk-in, 0 boat or canoe launches.
USGS gauges
Every gauge on the mainstem, upstream first. Links go to the USGS monitoring-location page for the site.
-
Peshtigo River at Peshtigo
— 04069500 · RM 0.0
173 July days of record across 6 Julys (2019–2026) · 327 cfs at last read
Public land on the river
2 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 13,279 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.
| Unit | Owner | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Governor Earl Peshtigo River State Forest | state natural-resources agency | 11,938 |
| Northeastern States District Office | Bureau of Land Management | 1,341 |
Species
WDNR has stocked brook trout into this water 17 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 brown trout into this water 22 times between 2015 and 2025. 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 27 times between 2015 and 2025. That is a stocking record rather than a survey — it says the fish were put in, not that a survey has found them since.
Historical July mean
The measured record behind every temperature band on this page: the mean of the daily means for July, at each gauge, over the years USGS has one.
| Gauge | July mean | July range | Julys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peshtigo | 75.5 °F | 15.5 °F | 6 |
Hatches on this water
42 insects are recorded from northern Wisconsin, 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 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 |
| Cranefly Tipula spp. |
April–June and September–October | 40–65°F | #6–10 |
| Grannom Brachycentrus spp. |
April–May | 48–58°F | #14–16 |
| Green Rock Worm / Green Weenie Rhyacophila spp. |
April–June and September–October | 45–68°F | #10–14 |
| Hendrickson Ephemerella subvaria |
April–May | 45–58°F | #12–14 |
| Alderfly Sialis spp. |
May–June | 52–66°F | #10–14 |
| Caterpillar Lepidoptera larvae |
May–September | 55–75°F | #8–14 |
| Crayfish Orconectes spp. |
May–October | 55–78°F | #4–8 |
| Giant Black Stonefly (Salmonfly) Pteronarcys dorsata |
May–June | 50–62°F | #4–6 |
| Green Sedge Rhyacophila spp. |
May–August | 48–64°F | #12–16 |
| Light Cahill Maccaffertium ithaca |
May–July | 55–68°F | #12–16 |
And 28 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.
Peshtigo River sits in HUC 8 04030105, the Peshtigo basin, and drains 473 square miles, Strahler order 5 at the mouth. 114 NHD reaches carry the name for 118.7 miles in total — more than the 22.8 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.