BirdTrout

Saint Croix River, Wisconsin

14.5 mapped river miles, draining 4,553 square miles, in the St Croix basin watershed. 3 USGS gauges report water temperature on it, and this page reads all 3.

Open in BirdTrout →

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

58 64 70

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, 13:47 UTC. Not all of them, though: St. Croix River near Danbury is not reporting water temperature — its water-temperature series is empty, and was last stamped 28 September 2026. That pill carries a modelled temperature where one can be fitted, marked as modelled, and a dash where it cannot — never a stale reading dressed as a current one.

Thermal classification

This is inferred, not measured. Wisconsin DNR does not publish a temperature classification for this water. What it publishes is a management tier — whether the trout in it are wild, hold over through summer, or are stocked and fished out — and the bands below are read off that tier, because a stream that sustains wild trout is a cold stream and one that does not hold fish past July is not. It is the agency's judgement of the fishery translated into the four bands this site paints everywhere else; it is not a thermometer, and where the two disagree the thermometer is right.

Each gauge carries a July mean built from its own daily record — 7 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.

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.

Questions about this river

• Saint Croix River fishing report — what it reads right now
• When to fish the Saint Croix River — hatches, seasons and temperature
• How to get to the Saint Croix River — access, parking and public land
• Saint Croix River fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach

Wisconsin DNR classification

Wisconsin DNR classifies this water as Class III. The management tier on those reaches is stocked. 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.

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.

• St. Croix River near Danbury — 05333500 · RM 0.0
  217 July days of record across 7 Julys (2019–2026) · 538 cfs at last read
• St. Croix River at St. Croix Falls — 05340500 · RM 0.0
  217 July days of record across 7 Julys (2019–2026) · 1,610 cfs at last read
• St. Croix River at Stillwater — 05341550 · RM 0.0
  217 July days of record across 7 Julys (2019–2026) · 1,830 cfs at last read

Public land on the river

3 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 41,791 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Species

Wisconsin DNR designates this as trout water — Class III — without naming the species. No fish survey or stocking record for this water is in the files this site reads.

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.

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.

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

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

• Sand Creek 20.7 mi · RM 10.6
• Iron Creek 2.3 mi · RM 9.9
• Barrett Creek 1.7 mi · RM 11.8
• Ekdall Brook 1.4 mi · RM 7.2
• East Brook 1.0 mi · RM 1.4
• Bear Creek 0.8 mi · RM 8.0
• Bear Brook 0.5 mi · RM 5.0
• Kettle Brook 0.3 mi · RM 4.3
• Bear Paw Creek 0.2 mi · RM 6.4
• Redhorse Creek 0.1 mi · RM 0.0
• Kettle River 0.1 mi · RM 2.4

Saint Croix River sits in HUC 8 07030001, 07030002 and 07030005, the St Croix basin, and drains 4,553 square miles, Strahler order 6 at the mouth. 187 NHD reaches carry the name for 135.6 miles in total — more than the 14.5 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.

• Ekdall Brook 1.5 mi
• Bear Brook 2.2 mi
• Kettle Brook 2.6 mi
• Little Hay Creek 2.7 mi · MN
• East Brook 3.9 mi
• Sioux Portage Creek 5.0 mi