BirdTrout

Tainter Creek, Wisconsin

14.2 mapped river miles, draining 51 square miles, in the Kickapoo basin watershed. No gauge stands in it; the nearest is 39.0 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 39.0 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.

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.

Wisconsin DNR has classified 14.9 of the 15.9 miles NHD carries for this stream — 94% 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.

Questions about this river

• Tainter Creek fishing report — what it reads right now
• When to fish Tainter Creek — hatches, seasons and temperature
• How to get to Tainter Creek — access, parking and public land
• Tainter Creek fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
• Is Tainter Creek good for brook trout?
• Is Tainter Creek good for brown trout?

Wisconsin DNR classification

Wisconsin DNR classifies this water as Class I and Class II. 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 wild, 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 →

Public land on the river

2 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 1,696 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Species

• Brook Trout stocked only
• Brown Trout stocked only

WDNR has stocked brook trout into this water 19 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.

WDNR has stocked brown trout into this water 6 times between 2015 and 2020. 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.

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

Tainter Creek sits in HUC 8 07070006, the Kickapoo basin, and drains 51 square miles, Strahler order 5 at the mouth. 29 NHD reaches carry the name for 15.9 miles in total — more than the 14.2 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.

• Reads Creek 3.0 mi
• Bear Creek 3.2 mi
• Sherry Creek 3.4 mi
• Hornby Creek 5.0 mi
• Harrison Creek 5.4 mi
• West Fork Kickapoo River 5.7 mi