BirdTrout

Brule Watershed, Michigan

785 miles of mapped stream across 1,052 square miles of drainage, in 92 named streams. Michigan designates 446 of those miles as trout water, on 76 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 04030106 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

785 mi
of mapped stream
1,979 NHD reaches
1,052 sq mi
drainage area
673,271 acres
169,920 ac
public land
25.2% of the basin · 90 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 26% of this basin's stream miles (204.7 of 785); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

148.5 of the 204.7 typed miles in this basin — 73% — are cold or cold-transitional water. The dominant class is cold-transitional.

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 59.9 mi, medium 58.3 mi, low 55.1 mi, very low 31.4 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

1,052 square miles of drainage, 784.7 mapped stream miles, and 76 of the 92 named streams designated as trout water over 445.8 miles. Three carry Blue Ribbon designations — Cooks Run, the Iron River and the Paint. The Paint River is the longest water here at 44.5 miles, typed cool; its South Branch runs 29.4 miles cold and carries Type 3 and Type 4 reaches, and its North Branch 17.3 miles cold-transitional. Both branches of the Net River, 37.2 miles between them, also type cold-transitional. MDNR has classified 26% of the basin's stream miles, and over those 204.7 miles the split is 78.3 cold-transitional, 70.2 cold and 56.2 cool, with gradient spread evenly across all four classes. Public land is 169,921 acres and 25.2% of the ground, with the US Forest Service holding 95,948 of it against the state's 48,511. No gauge here carries a July record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 92 of them, longest first. 6 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
Paint River Blue Ribbon 44.5 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
South Branch Paint River 29.4 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
East Branch Net River 20.1 Cold-transitional — Type 2
North Branch Paint River 17.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
West Branch Net River 17.1 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Net River 14.9 Cool — Type 2
Hemlock River 12.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Bush Creek 12.8 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Cooks Run Blue Ribbon 12.5 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Iron River Blue Ribbon 11.7 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Chicagon Slough 9.4 Cool — Type 2
Silver Creek 9.2 Cold — Type 2
Golden Creek 8.7 Cold — Type 2
Holmes Creek 8.4 Cold — Type 2
Stager Creek 8.2 Cold — Type 2
Little Hemlock River 7.8 Cold-transitional — Type 2
West Branch Hemlock River 7.6 untyped — Type 2
Briar Hill Creek 6.8 Cool — Type 2
East Branch Hemlock River 6.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Sunset Creek 6.3 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Dunn Creek 6.1 Cool — Type 2
Saint Paul Creek 6.1 Cool — Type 2
Peterson Creek 5.8 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Tracy Creek 5.6 Cold — Type 2
Thirtythree Creek 5.5 Cold — Type 2
Morrison Creek 5.3 Cold — Type 2
Stanley Creek 4.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Parks Creek 4.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Alpha Creek 4.6 untyped — Type 2
McColman Creek 4.6 untyped — Type 2
Wagner Creek 4.5 Cold-transitional — —
North Branch Iron River 4.3 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Reservoir Creek 4.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Olson Creek 4.3 Cold — Type 2
Costigan Creek 4.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
West Branch Armstrong Creek 4.1 Cold-transitional — Type 2
New York Creek 4.0 untyped — Type 2
McAllister Creek 4.0 Cold — Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Porter Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Railroad Creek 3.9 untyped — Type 2
Manila Creek 3.8 Cold-transitional — Type 2
De Mongo Creek 3.8 untyped — Type 2
Mastodon Creek 3.8 untyped — —
East Branch Armstrong Creek 3.7 Cool — Type 2
Nash Creek 3.6 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Gilbert Creek 3.6 untyped — Type 2
Pickerel Lake Creek 3.6 untyped — Type 2
South Branch Iron River 3.4 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Tim Bowers Creek 3.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Lode Creek 3.2 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Post Creek 3.1 untyped — Type 2
Autio Creek 3.0 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Paint Creek 2.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Barnetts Creek 2.9 untyped — Type 2
Seven Springs Creek 2.7 Cold — Type 2
Defiance Creek 2.7 untyped — Type 2
Borski Creek 2.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Stump Creek 2.7 untyped — Type 2
Crystal Spring Creek 2.6 untyped — Type 2
Ketchum Creek 2.5 Cold-transitional — Type 2
County Line Creek 2.4 Cold — Type 2
Gravel Pit Creek 2.4 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Mitigwaki Creek 2.4 Cool — —
Farley Creek 2.4 untyped — —
Tote Creek 2.4 Cool — —
Fox Farm Creek 2.3 Cold — Type 2
Waterworks Creek 2.1 untyped — Type 2
Fire Lake Creek 2.0 Cool — Type 2
Edna Creek 2.0 Cold — Type 2
McRae Creek 2.0 untyped — Type 2
Fortune Lake Creek 2.0 untyped — —
Youngers Creek 1.8 untyped — Type 2
Winslow Creek 1.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Blaney Creek 1.6 untyped — —
Old Joe Creek 1.5 untyped — Type 2
Shank Lake Creek 1.4 untyped — Type 2
Cedar Creek 1.4 untyped — —
Cable Lake Creek 1.3 Cold — —
Iron Lake Creek 1.2 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Bleat Creek 1.1 untyped — —
Spring Lake Creek 1.1 untyped — —
Mallard Creek 1.0 untyped — Type 2
Mikes Creek 0.9 untyped — Type 2
Start Creek 0.9 untyped — —
Nelson Creek 0.8 untyped — Type 2
Flanigan Slough 0.8 untyped — Type 2
South Slough 0.7 Cold — —
Harrison Creek 0.7 untyped — —
Longs Creek 0.6 untyped — Type 2
Finn Farm Creek 0.6 untyped — Type 2
Pass Creek 0.6 Cool — —
Jesso Creek 0.1 untyped — Type 2

Public land in the watershed

169,920 acres in 90 units, which is 25.2% of the 673,271 acres the basin covers. Private inholdings carried in the same source file are excluded, here and on the map.

Managing agency Acres Share Units
US Forest Service 95,948 56% 7
Michigan DNR 48,511 29% 25
Designation overlay 13,553 8% 4
Local Government land 3,758 2% 18
City and township land 3,162 2% 9
Land trusts and conservancies 2,877 2% 1
County land 1,244 1% 2
Iron County 415 0% 2

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.