BirdTrout

Au Sable River Watershed, Michigan

1,697 miles of mapped stream across 2,049 square miles of drainage in Alcona, Crawford, Iosco, Oscoda, Roscommon counties, in 89 named streams. Michigan designates 782 of those miles as trout water, on 79 streams. The 8 mainstem gauges with a July record read between 66.3 and 75.5°F in July.

Open in BirdTrout
Map key
Public land — where the bank is open to walk and fish
USGS gauge — live water temperature
Water temperature — the colour of every stream in the basin

50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands the app paints. On this map the colour is MDNR's classification of the valley segment, not a measurement, except at the gauge dots, which read live. Grey is water MDNR has not typed.

The watershed in numbers

HUC8 04070007 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,697 mi
of mapped stream
3,952 NHD reaches
2,049 sq mi
drainage area
1,311,054 acres
66.3–75.5°F
July water temperature at the gauges
8 mainstem gauges, mean 72.1°F
555,815 ac
public land
42.4% of the basin · 167 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 29% of this basin's stream miles (496.6 of 1,697); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

269.4 of the 496.6 typed miles in this basin — 54% — are cold or cold-transitional water. The dominant class is cool.

There is no elevation model behind this page, so it carries no elevation range. MDNR's gradient class is the field that answers the same question, and over the typed miles it reads: high 234.4 mi, medium 117.9 mi, low 78.1 mi, very low 66.2 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Au Sable River runs 137.7 miles through a basin that is 42.4% public ground — 555,815 acres, most of it Michigan DNR state forest, with another 109,992 acres of national forest. That is the fact that shapes the place: 2,049 square miles of drainage, 89 named streams, and 79 of them designated trout water over 781.7 miles. MDNR has typed 29% of the 1,696.7 mapped stream miles, and across that sample the water splits 170.6 miles cool, 145.6 cold, 123.8 cold-transitional and 56.6 warm. The mainstem itself types cold-transitional; the South Branch runs 51.5 miles cool, the North Branch 37 miles cold-transitional, and the two branches of Big Creek, 59.4 miles between them, both type cold. Hunt Creek and the Pine River hold Blue Ribbon designations. Eight mainstem gauges read between 66.3 and 75.5°F in July — a spread that reflects where the gauges sit, low on the river, rather than the basin as a whole.

Every named stream in the basin

All 89 of them, longest first. 67 have a page of their own and are linked; the rest are in the app. Thermal class is MDNR's, over the reaches it has typed. "Now" is the live USGS reading where a gauge stands in that stream.

Stream Miles Class Now Designation
Au Sable River 137.7 Cold-transitional 54.7°F Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
South Branch Au Sable River 51.5 Cool 56.7°F Type 2, Type 3
North Branch Au Sable River 37.0 Cold-transitional 56.1°F Type 1, Type 2, Type 3
West Branch Big Creek 33.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
East Branch Big Creek 25.6 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Van Etten Creek 20.8 Warm — Type 1, Type 2
Beaver Creek 20.3 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
East Branch Au Sable River 17.7 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
West Branch Pine River 17.4 Cold — Type 2
East Branch Pine River 14.9 Cold — Type 2
South Branch Pine River 13.2 Cold-transitional — Type 2
South Branch River 13.0 Cool — Type 2
Middle Branch Big Creek 12.5 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
McGillis Creek 12.2 Cool — Type 2
Pine River Blue Ribbon 11.8 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Backus Creek 11.6 Cool — Type 2
Roy Creek 11.1 Cool — Type 2
Kolke Creek 10.7 Cold — Type 2
Bryant Creek 10.1 Cool — Type 2
Lost Creek 9.7 Cool — Type 2
Wallace Creek 9.5 Cool — Type 2
Blockhouse Creek 9.3 Cool — Type 2, Type 4
Wilbur Creek 8.9 Cool — Type 2
Cherry Creek 8.5 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Perry Creek 8.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Duval Creek 8.3 Cool — Type 2
Crapo Creek 8.0 Warm — Type 2, Type 3
Smith Creek 7.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Honeywell Creek 7.6 Cool — —
Loud Creek 7.4 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Wright Creek 7.3 Cool — Type 2
East Creek 7.2 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Stewart Creek 7.0 Cold — Type 2, Type 4
Bamfield Creek 7.0 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Robinson Creek 6.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Comins Creek 6.9 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Hudson Creek 6.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Cameron Creek 6.7 Cool — —
Bradford Creek 6.6 untyped — Type 2
South Creek 6.4 Cool — Type 2
Vandercook Creek 6.3 Cool — Type 2
McDonald Creek 6.3 untyped — Type 2
Old Au Sable River 6.2 Warm — Type 1, Type 2
Big Creek 5.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Kurtz Creek 5.9 Cool — Type 2
Thayer Creek 5.9 Cold-transitional — —
Marsh Creek 5.9 Cool — —
Sohn Creek 5.8 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Gimlet Creek 5.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Turtle Creek 5.7 Warm — —
Harper Creek 5.0 untyped — Type 2
Chub Creek 5.0 Cool — Type 2
Coppler Creek 4.9 untyped — Type 2
Hickey Creek 4.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Barker Creek 4.7 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Glennie Creek 4.6 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Phelan Creek 4.6 untyped — Type 2
Hill Creek 4.3 Cool — Type 2
Wolf Creek 4.1 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Douglas Creek 3.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Grey Creek 3.8 Cool — Type 2
Antler Creek 3.7 Cool — Type 2
Baker Creek 3.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Russell Creek 3.7 Cool — —
Ninemile Creek 3.5 Cold — Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Hunt Creek Blue Ribbon 3.4 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Penoyer Creek 3.2 Cold — Type 2
Au Sable Creek 3.2 untyped — Type 2
Cauchy Creek 3.0 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Wildcat Creek 2.9 untyped — Type 2
Hoppy Creek 2.9 Cold — Type 2
Mink Creek 2.8 untyped — Type 2
Red Creek 2.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Sauger Creek 2.7 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Whitewater Creek 2.7 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Gammey Creek 2.6 Cool — Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Wakeley Creek 2.5 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Samyn Creek 2.4 Cold — Type 2
Gusler Creek 2.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Simpson Creek 2.1 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
State Ditch 2.1 Cool — —
Hubble Creek 2.0 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Joslin Creek 1.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Dry Creek 1.6 Cool — Type 1, Type 2
Cedar Creek 1.6 untyped — —
Carter Creek 1.3 Cool — —
Asum Creek 1.2 untyped — Type 2
Mattson Creek 0.7 untyped — —
Little Beaver Creek 0.3 Cool — Type 2

Public land in the watershed

555,815 acres in 167 units, which is 42.4% of the 1,311,054 acres the basin covers. Private inholdings carried in the same source file are excluded, here and on the map.

Managing agency Acres Share Units
Michigan DNR 416,582 75% 52
US Forest Service 109,996 20% 7
Local Government land 19,169 3% 43
US Fish & Wildlife Service 4,606 1% 2
Michignan DNR 1,493 0% 1
City and township land 1,318 0% 16
Other State Land 641 0% 2
Consumers Power Company 635 0% 1

The biggest named blocks of it, each with its own page — the streams on that ground, what is open to hunt on it, and where the access sites are.

Species present

Recorded by MDNR at 3 survey stations in this basin, or in its stocking record. The temperature ranges are our own species table and are the same numbers the app's picker uses.

Species Best water Tolerates Evidence
Brook trout
Salvelinus fontinalis
 50–60°F 42–65°F surveyed stocked
Brown trout
Salmo trutta
 55–63°F 45–70°F surveyed stocked
Rainbow trout
Oncorhynchus mykiss
 55–64°F 44–70°F surveyed stocked
Chinook salmon
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
 50–58°F 42–68°F stocked
Coho salmon
Oncorhynchus kisutch
 48–56°F 40–65°F stocked
Atlantic salmon — — stocked
Lake trout — — stocked
Yellow Perch — — stocked

Best time to fish

The hatch calendar for northern lower Michigan, which is the region this basin's centre falls in — the same regions the app's hatch panel uses. It is a regional record, not a survey of this watershed: nobody has counted insects basin by basin. Year-round records (midges, scuds, sculpins) are left out; they are true every month and they are not what a calendar is for.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

53 insects are recorded from northern lower Michigan. Each links to its own page, with the flies that imitate it.

Neighbouring watersheds

The subbasins that share a boundary with this one and carry coldwater streams.

Plan a weekend around it

The weekend this basin adds up to — the biggest water in it, what is hatching when, the public land in range and a three-day plan.