BirdTrout

South Fork Bad Axe River, Wisconsin

10.1 mapped river miles, draining 80 square miles, in the Coon Yellow basin watershed. No gauge stands in it; the nearest is 34.4 miles away, and what this page knows about its temperature is Wisconsin DNR's classification of the water itself.

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.

The nearest live reading

The nearest gauge is 34.4 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.

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.

Wisconsin DNR's classification of this water, reach by reach. A class, not a temperature — no July mean, because none was measured here.

Wisconsin DNR has classified 15.9 of the 16.0 miles NHD carries for this stream — 99% of it. Every typed reach carries the same class, 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

• South Fork Bad Axe River fishing report — what it reads right now
• When to fish the South Fork Bad Axe River — hatches, seasons and temperature
• South Fork Bad Axe 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 →

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.

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.

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.

• North Fork Bad Axe River 31.8 mi · RM 0.0
• Bad Axe River 0.3 mi · RM 0.0

South Fork Bad Axe River sits in HUC 8 07060001, the Coon Yellow basin, and drains 80 square miles, Strahler order 5 at the mouth. 48 NHD reaches carry the name for 16.0 miles in total — more than the 10.1 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.

• Cox Creek 1.9 mi
• Hornby Creek 3.5 mi
• Hasley Creek 4.7 mi
• North Fork Bad Axe River 4.8 mi
• Springville Branch Bad Axe River 4.9 mi
• Coon Creek 5.3 mi