BirdTrout

Fishdam-Sturgeon Watershed, Michigan

628 miles of mapped stream across 580 square miles of drainage, in 49 named streams. Michigan designates 216 of those miles as trout water, on 32 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 04030112 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

628 mi
of mapped stream
1,564 NHD reaches
580 sq mi
drainage area
371,406 acres
123,366 ac
public land
33.2% of the basin · 27 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 9% of this basin's stream miles (53.9 of 628); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

15.3 of the 53.9 typed miles in this basin — 28% — 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: medium 27.5 mi, low 11.4 mi, very low 9.5 mi, high 5.5 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

A small basin — 580 square miles, 627.5 mapped stream miles, 49 named streams — built around one long river. The Sturgeon runs 65.5 miles here, types cool, and carries Type 4 water along with its Blue Ribbon designation; its West Branch, 12.5 miles, is also Blue Ribbon. The Fishdam River adds 22.8 miles, likewise cool and likewise Type 4. 32 streams are designated trout water over 215.5 miles. MDNR's classification covers 9% of the basin's stream miles, and across those 53.9 miles cool water dominates at 37.7, with 9.4 cold-transitional, 5.9 cold and 0.8 warm. Eighteenmile Creek, 11.5 miles, is the longest cold-transitional water in the sample. Public ground is 123,366 acres and 33.2% of the basin, held in only 27 units — the US Forest Service has 74,506 acres of it and the state 40,119. No gauge here carries a July record, and MDNR has no survey station in the basin.

Every named stream in the basin

All 49 of them, longest first. 7 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
Sturgeon River Blue Ribbon 65.5 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Fishdam River 22.8 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
West Branch Sturgeon River Blue Ribbon 12.5 Cool — Type 2
Eighteenmile Creek 11.5 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Little Fishdam River 9.5 Cool — —
Southwest Branch Fishdam River 8.3 Cool — Type 2
Bull Run 7.7 Warm — Type 1, Type 2
Spring Creek 6.8 Cool — Type 2
Garden Creek 6.5 Cool — —
Valentine Creek 6.5 Cool — —
Bursaw Creek 6.4 Cool — Type 2
Mormon Creek 6.2 untyped — Type 2, Type 4
Granskog Creek 5.9 untyped — —
Archambeau Creek 5.6 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Big River 5.6 Warm — —
Black Creek 5.1 Cold — Type 2
Ogontz River 5.0 Cool — Type 2
Martin Creek 4.5 untyped — —
Parent Creek 4.3 untyped — Type 2
Wilsey Bay Creek 4.3 untyped — —
Thompson Creek 4.2 untyped — Type 2
Little Black Creek 4.2 Cold — Type 2
Johnston Creek 4.2 untyped — —
Camp R Creek 4.0 Cool — —
East Branch Ogontz River 3.8 untyped — —
Little River 3.7 Warm — —
West Branch Ogontz River 3.5 untyped — Type 2
Southtown Creek 3.4 Cool — —
North Branch Ogontz River 3.2 untyped — Type 2
Snyder Creek 3.2 Cool — Type 2
Dead Horse Creek 3.2 untyped — Type 2
Johnson Creek 3.0 untyped — Type 2
Moses Creek 2.9 Cold-transitional — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Poodle Pete Creek 2.5 untyped — Type 2
Camp Twelve Creek 2.5 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Hartman Creek 2.3 untyped — —
Camp Seven Creek 2.0 untyped — Type 2
Camp Eleven Creek 1.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
McIgee Creek 1.9 untyped — Type 2
Onion Creek 1.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Williams Creek 1.8 untyped — Type 2
Puffy Creek 1.8 untyped — —
Gierke Creek 1.7 untyped — Type 2
Birch Creek 1.6 untyped — Type 2
Mink Creek 1.6 untyped — Type 2
Trail Creek 1.4 Cool — —
Tebo Creek 1.1 untyped — Type 2
Germaine Creek 1.0 untyped — —
Little Smelt Creek 0.3 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

123,366 acres in 27 units, which is 33.2% of the 371,406 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 74,506 60% 2
Michigan DNR 40,119 33% 15
Designation overlay 8,386 7% 1
County land 180 0% 1
City and township land 112 0% 1
Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy 38 0% 1
Hiawatha National Forest 13 0% 1
Local Government land 11 0% 4

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.