BirdTrout

Betsy-Chocolay Watershed, Michigan

1,583 miles of mapped stream across 1,150 square miles of drainage, in 106 named streams. Michigan designates 678 of those miles as trout water, on 94 streams.

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 04020201 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,583 mi
of mapped stream
4,744 NHD reaches
1,150 sq mi
drainage area
736,238 acres
482,292 ac
public land
65.5% of the basin · 103 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 14% of this basin's stream miles (218.2 of 1,583); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

209.6 of the 218.2 typed miles in this basin — 96% — are cold or cold-transitional water. The dominant class is cold.

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 97.7 mi, medium 76.4 mi, low 39.1 mi, very low 5.0 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

Two thirds of this basin is open ground. 482,291 acres — 65.5% of it — are public, the highest share of any watershed on this map, and they are held in an unusual mix: 255,587 acres of state land, 76,677 under the National Park Service, 46,677 local, and 41,534 acres whose owner the source does not record. The water is cold. Of the 218.2 miles MDNR has typed, 150.5 are cold and 59.1 cold-transitional, against 5.2 cool and 3.4 warm — but that is 14% of the 1,583 mapped stream miles, so it is a sample and a consistent one rather than a census. 94 of the 106 named streams are designated trout water, over 677.7 miles. The Two Hearted River carries a Blue Ribbon designation across 23.6 miles of Type 3 and Type 4 water; the Sucker, Shelldrake and Chocolay all type cold. No gauge here holds a July record, and MDNR has no survey station in the basin.

Every named stream in the basin

All 106 of them, longest first. 33 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
Sucker River 34.8 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Shelldrake River 33.5 Cold — Type 2
Little Two Hearted River 25.4 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Two Hearted River Blue Ribbon 23.6 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
East Branch Two Hearted River 22.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Chocolay River 21.7 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
North Branch Two Hearted River 20.0 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Au Train River 19.4 Warm — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Laughing Whitefish River 19.4 Cold-transitional — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Rock River 17.5 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
West Branch Two Hearted River 13.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Slapneck Creek 13.8 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Johnson Creek 13.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
South Branch Shelldrake River 13.1 Cold — Type 2
East Branch Chocolay River 12.6 untyped — Type 2
Miners River 12.4 Cold-transitional — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Nelson Creek 12.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Dawson Creek 11.9 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Silver Creek 11.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 4
Big Creek 11.5 Cold — Type 2
Blind Sucker River 10.8 untyped — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Black Creek 9.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
LeVasseur Creek 9.9 Cool — Type 2
South Branch Two Hearted River 9.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Sand River 9.4 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Hanson Creek 8.1 Cold — Type 2
Anna River 7.9 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Cedar Creek 7.2 Cold — Type 2
West Branch Chocolay River 7.0 untyped — Type 2
West Branch Laughing Whitefish River 7.0 Cold-transitional — Type 2
East Branch LeVasseur Creek 6.9 Cool — Type 2
Foster Creek 6.7 untyped — Type 2
Mosquito River 6.6 Cold-transitional — Type 2
East Branch Sand River 6.6 Cold — Type 2
West Branch Sucker River 6.5 untyped — Type 2
Hurricane River 6.4 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Baker Creek 6.2 Cold — Type 2
Cherry Creek 6.1 Cold — Type 2, Type 4
Buck Bay Creek 5.9 Cold — Type 2
Cole Creek 5.8 Cold — Type 2
Peterson Creek 5.7 Cold — Type 2
Chapel Creek 5.4 untyped — Type 2
Widgeon Creek 5.4 Cold — Type 2
North Branch Slapneck Creek 5.0 untyped — Type 2
Joe Creek 4.9 Cold — Type 2
Spray Creek 4.7 Cold — Type 2
Culhane Creek 4.7 Cold — Type 2
Camp One Creek 4.7 Cold — Type 2
Voce Creek 4.7 untyped — Type 2
Dead Sucker River 4.7 untyped — —
Sable Creek 4.5 Cold — Type 1, Type 2
Gongeau Creek 4.4 untyped — Type 2
Sullivan Creek 4.4 Cold — Type 2
Jack Creek 4.3 Cold — Type 2
B A Creek 4.2 untyped — Type 2
Sevenmile Creek 4.0 Cold — Type 2
Sheen Creek 3.9 untyped — Type 2
Haverstock Creek 3.8 untyped — Type 2
Joel Creek 3.7 Cold — Type 2
Little Dawson Creek 3.7 untyped — Type 2
Threemile Creek 3.6 Cold — Type 2
Bohemian Creek 3.5 untyped — Type 2
Wise Man Creek 3.4 untyped — Type 2
Klondike Creek 3.4 untyped — Type 2
Silver Lead Creek 3.2 Cold — Type 2
Dorsey Creek 3.2 untyped — Type 2
Harvey Creek 3.2 Cold — Type 2
Blood Creek 3.2 untyped — Type 2
Dorow Creek 3.1 Cold — Type 2
Dead Creek 3.0 untyped — —
Browns Creek 3.0 untyped — —
Rhody Creek 2.8 Cold — Type 2
Wabash Creek 2.7 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Grand Marais Creek 2.7 untyped — Type 2
Towes Creek 2.6 Cold — Type 2
Valley Spur Creek 2.5 untyped — Type 2
South Branch Slapneck Creek 2.5 untyped — Type 2
Norby Creek 2.4 Cold — Type 2
West Branch Nelson Creek 2.3 untyped — Type 2
East Branch Lowney Creek 2.3 Cold — —
Dairy Creek 2.2 untyped — Type 2
O'Neil Creek 2.2 untyped — Type 2
Little Beaver Creek 2.0 Cold — Type 2
Trout Creek 2.0 untyped — Type 2
Lowney Creek 1.8 untyped — Type 2
Johns Creek 1.6 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Munising Falls Creek 1.6 Cold — Type 2
Section Thirtyfour Creek 1.5 Cold — Type 2
Wagner Creek 1.5 untyped — Type 2
Arsenault Creek 1.4 Cold — Type 2
Spring Creek 1.4 untyped — —
De Mull Creek 1.3 untyped — Type 2
O'Briens Creek 1.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Carpenter Creek 1.2 Cold — Type 2
West Branch Lowney Creek 1.2 Cold — —
Carp River 1.2 untyped — —
Weatherhogs Creek 1.2 untyped — —
Black Mosquite Creek 1.1 untyped — Type 2
Whisky Creek 1.0 untyped — Type 2
Fish Hatchery Creek 0.9 untyped — —
Porter Creek 0.8 untyped — Type 2, Type 4
Cris Brown Creek 0.8 Cool — Type 2
Bills Creek 0.8 untyped — —
Tannery Creek 0.8 untyped — —
Beaver Creek 0.6 untyped — Type 2
Chipmunk Creek 0.5 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

482,292 acres in 103 units, which is 65.5% of the 736,238 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 255,587 53% 33
National Park Service 81,150 17% 4
Local Government land 46,677 10% 11
Owner not recorded 41,534 9% 4
The Nature Conservancy 26,004 5% 3
US Forest Service 19,346 4% 3
Land trusts and conservancies 4,577 1% 7
Northern Research Station 3,762 1% 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.

Best time to fish

The hatch calendar for the Upper Peninsula, 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

42 insects are recorded from the Upper Peninsula. 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.