BirdTrout

Cheboygan Watershed, Michigan

944 miles of mapped stream across 894 square miles of drainage in Cheboygan, Emmet, Otsego counties, in 64 named streams. Michigan designates 356 of those miles as trout water, on 49 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 04070004 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

944 mi
of mapped stream
1,387 NHD reaches
894 sq mi
drainage area
572,194 acres
219,288 ac
public land
38.3% of the basin · 181 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 18% of this basin's stream miles (168.9 of 944); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

118.6 of the 168.9 typed miles in this basin — 70% — 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 110.5 mi, medium 34.6 mi, very low 18.1 mi, low 5.7 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

Five Blue Ribbon designations sit here — the Black, Maple, Pigeon and Sturgeon rivers and the West Branch Sturgeon — in a basin of 894 square miles and 64 named streams. 49 of those streams are designated trout water over 356 miles. The typed water is cold: 100.2 of 168.9 miles, against 43.5 cool, 18.4 cold-transitional and 6.8 warm, and 110.5 of those typed miles are high-gradient. Coverage is 18% of the basin's 944 mapped stream miles. The Sturgeon River types cold across 40.8 miles with Type 3 water on it, and its West Branch another 18.6 miles cold; the Pigeon, 47 miles and the longest stream here, types cool. The West Branch Maple and the Little Sturgeon are untyped. Public ground is 219,289 acres and 38.3% of the basin, 202,169 of it state land. MDNR holds five survey stations here — more than in most basins on this map — recording brook, brown and rainbow trout.

Every named stream in the basin

All 64 of them, longest first. 9 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
Pigeon River Blue Ribbon 47.0 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 3
Sturgeon River Blue Ribbon 40.8 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 3
West Branch Sturgeon River Blue Ribbon 18.6 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
West Branch Maple River 17.9 untyped — Type 2
Little Pigeon River 16.6 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Little Sturgeon River 12.4 untyped — Type 2
Club Stream 11.2 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Mullett Creek 11.0 Cold — Type 2
Berry Creek 10.9 Cold — Type 2
East Branch Maple River 9.2 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
McPhee Creek 8.7 Cold — Type 2
Maple River Blue Ribbon 8.5 Cold-transitional — Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Van Creek 8.1 Cool — Type 2
South Branch Pigeon River 7.3 Cold — Type 2
Silver Creek 7.2 Cold — Type 2
Cheboygan River 7.0 Warm — Type 1, Type 2
Stewart Creek 6.6 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Crumley Creek 6.2 untyped — Type 2
Minnehaha Creek 6.0 Cold — Type 2
Crooked River 5.6 Cool — Type 2
Mud Creek 5.2 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Middle Branch Little Pigeon River 5.2 untyped — Type 2
Laperell Creek 5.2 Cold — Type 2
Hatt Creek 4.8 Cool — —
Cope Creek 4.8 Cold — —
Cornwall Creek 4.7 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Mossback Creek 4.6 untyped — Type 2
Certon Creek 4.6 Cold — —
Ballard Creek 4.5 Cold — —
Marl Creek 4.2 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Brush Creek 4.2 untyped — Type 2
Tannery Gully 4.2 Cool — —
Wilkes Creek 4.1 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Kimberly Creek 4.0 untyped — Type 2
Lancaster Creek 4.0 Cool — —
Indian River 3.9 untyped — Type 2
Terry Creek 3.9 untyped — Type 2
Sanford Creek 3.8 untyped — Type 2
Mullett Lake Creek 3.5 Cool — Type 2
North Branch Little Pigeon River 3.4 Cool — Type 2
Johnson Creek 3.1 untyped — Type 2
Allen Creek 3.0 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
West Branch Minnehaha Creek 3.0 untyped — Type 2
Maxwell Gully 3.0 Cool — —
Blackjack Creek 2.8 untyped — Type 2
Cold Creek 2.8 Cool — Type 2
Cedar Point Creek 2.8 Cold — —
Beebe Creek 2.5 untyped — Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Birchwood Creek 2.5 untyped — —
Hasler Creek 2.2 untyped — —
Scott Creek 2.0 untyped — —
Cedar Creek 1.9 untyped — Type 2
McIntosh Creek 1.9 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Morrow Creek 1.8 untyped — Type 2
Little Carp River 1.6 Cold — Type 2
Sipper Creek 1.3 untyped — —
Bradley Creek 1.2 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Pickerel Creek 1.1 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Whites Creek 1.0 Cold — Type 2
Twin Lakes Creek 0.8 untyped — Type 2
Wing Creek 0.8 untyped — —
Burrows Creek 0.7 untyped — Type 2
Mann Creek 0.3 untyped — —
Black River Blue Ribbon 0.1 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

219,288 acres in 181 units, which is 38.3% of the 572,194 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 202,169 92% 39
Local Government land 13,647 6% 66
Little Traverse Conservancy 1,925 1% 33
Other State Land 299 0% 1
University of Michigan 277 0% 1
Little Traverse Land Conservancy 275 0% 1
County land 191 0% 1
Land Trust 147 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 5 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
Walleye
Sander vitreus
 62–72°F 50–80°F stocked
Arctic grayling — — stocked
Fathead minnow — — stocked
Lake sturgeon — — stocked
Muskellunge — — 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.