BirdTrout
Tamarack Creek, Wisconsin
23 mapped river miles, draining 46 square miles, in the Trempealeau basin watershed. No gauge stands in it; the nearest is 36.0 miles away, and what this page knows about its temperature is Wisconsin DNR's classification of the water itself.
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 36.0 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.
The character of the water
Tamarack Creek is Class III water under Wisconsin DNR, managed as stocked, and every one of the 16 miles it has typed — 70 per cent of its 22.75 NHD miles — is classed Cool rather than Cold. The class and the tier say the same thing about this water. There is no gauge in it and no measured temperature. The channel is 14.8 feet across at the median, fourth order, draining 45.91 square miles over the 22.6 miles of axis mapped, essentially its whole NHD length. Public ground is the Tamarack Creek Wildlife Area, 588 acres fronting 2.59 miles, with the Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge touching three-hundredths of a mile despite its 7,216 acres. Holcomb Coulee Creek comes in at river mile 15.5.
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.
| Reach | Typed miles | Band | Wisconsin DNR type |
|---|---|---|---|
| RM 22.6–6.7 | 16.0 | cool | — |
Wisconsin DNR has classified 16.0 of the 23 miles NHD carries for this stream — 70% 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
- Tamarack Creek fishing report — what it reads right now
- When to fish Tamarack Creek — hatches, seasons and temperature
- How to get to Tamarack Creek — access, parking and public land
- Tamarack Creek fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
- Is Tamarack Creek good for brook trout?
- Is Tamarack Creek good for brown trout?
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 →
Public land on the river
2 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 7,804 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.
| Unit | Owner | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Tamarack Creek Wildlife Area | state natural-resources agency | 588 |
| Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | 7,216 |
Species
WDNR has stocked brook trout into this water 10 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 brown trout into this water 9 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.
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
1 named stream meets this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.
Tamarack Creek sits in HUC 8 07040005, the Trempealeau basin, and drains 46 square miles, Strahler order 4 at the mouth. 30 NHD reaches carry the name for 22.8 miles in total — more than the 22.6 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.