BirdTrout

Keweenaw Peninsula Watershed, Michigan

2,040 miles of mapped stream across 1,092 square miles of drainage, in 116 named streams. Michigan designates 673 of those miles as trout water, on 101 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 04020103 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

2,040 mi
of mapped stream
3,549 NHD reaches
1,092 sq mi
drainage area
699,037 acres
126,146 ac
public land
18.0% of the basin · 193 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 21% of this basin's stream miles (426.3 of 2,040); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

262.8 of the 426.3 typed miles in this basin — 62% — 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 401.3 mi, medium 16.7 mi, very low 8.3 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

101 of the 116 named streams in this basin are designated trout water, across 672.7 miles of a 2,039.7-mile network. The typed water is cold — 243.5 miles of it, against 108.8 cool, 54.7 warm and 19.3 cold-transitional — and it is steep: 401.3 of the 426.3 typed miles run at high gradient, which is almost the whole sample and the most one-sided gradient profile on this map. Coverage is 21% of the basin's stream miles. The Montreal River types cold across 26.8 miles; the West Branch Firesteel River runs 20.5 miles cold with Type 4 water on it; the Misery River, 24.1 miles, types cold-transitional and carries Type 4 reaches too. The Flintsteel River, longest here at 28.3 miles, types warm. Public land is 126,146 acres and 18% of the basin, and its second-largest holder is not a government: The Nature Conservancy has 33,716 acres against the state's 46,789.

Every named stream in the basin

All 116 of them, longest first. 45 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
Flintsteel River 28.3 Warm — Type 2
Montreal River 26.8 Cold — Type 2
Misery River 24.1 Cold-transitional — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
East Branch Firesteel River 22.4 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
East Sleeping River 21.3 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
West Branch Firesteel River 20.5 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Trap Rock River 19.7 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Black Creek 18.8 Cool — Type 2
Firesteel River 18.3 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Elm River 15.9 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Silver Creek 15.2 untyped — Type 2
Salmon Trout River 14.6 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Gratiot River 14.6 untyped — Type 1, Type 2
Tobacco River 14.0 Cold-transitional — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Little Gratiot River 14.0 Cool — —
Keweenaw Waterway 13.3 Cold — Type 2
Pilgrim River 12.8 Cold 51.1°F Type 2
Traverse River 11.9 Cool — Type 1, Type 2
Pike River 11.6 Cold — Type 2
Little Elm River 10.1 Cold-transitional — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Bear Creek Blue Ribbon 9.9 Warm — —
Hills Creek 9.3 Cold — Type 2
Graveraet River 8.7 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Paddys Creek 8.6 Warm — —
West Sleeping River 8.4 Cool — Type 2
Boston Creek 7.5 Cold — Type 2
Cane Creek 7.5 Warm — —
Holland Creek 7.2 untyped — Type 2
Mud Lake Creek 7.2 Cool — Type 2
North Branch Misery River 7.2 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Snake Creek 7.0 Cool — Type 2
East Branch Eagle River 7.0 Cold — Type 2
Bruneau Creek 7.0 Cold — Type 2
Little Misery River 6.8 Cool — Type 2
Dishinaw Creek 6.7 Cold — Type 2
Giles Creek 6.6 Cold — Type 2
Lily Creek 6.1 untyped — Type 2
Upson Creek 5.8 untyped — Type 2
Tenmile Creek 5.8 Cool — Type 2
South Branch Elm River 5.7 Cool — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Garden Brook 5.6 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Big Valley Creek 5.6 untyped — Type 2
Sleepy Creek 5.5 Cold — Type 2
Slaughterhouse Creek 5.5 untyped — Type 2
Union Creek 5.1 untyped — Type 2
East Branch Graveraet River 5.1 untyped — Type 2
Snake River 5.1 Cold — —
Gooseneck Creek 5.0 untyped — Type 2
Buffalo Creek 4.9 Cold — Type 2
Sevenmile Creek 4.9 Cold — Type 2
Schlot Creek 4.9 Cold — Type 2
McGuire Creek 4.9 untyped — Type 2
Dover Creek 4.6 Warm — Type 2
Hammell Creek 4.4 untyped — Type 2, Type 4
Clear Creek 4.3 untyped — Type 2
Obenhoff Creek 4.3 untyped — Type 2
Portage River 4.3 Warm — —
Senecal Creek 4.2 untyped — Type 2
French Annie Creek 4.2 Cold — Type 2
Romague Creek 4.1 Cold — Type 2
Swedetown Creek 4.0 Cold — Type 2
Lahti Creek 4.0 Cool — Type 2
Blackwood Creek 4.0 Warm — —
Eliza Creek 3.9 Cold — Type 2
Greentown Creek 3.8 Cool — Type 2
Deer Creek 3.8 Cold — Type 2
McCallum Creek 3.7 Cold — Type 2
Copper Creek 3.7 Cold — Type 2
Cole Creek 3.7 Cold — Type 2
Muggun Creek 3.7 Cold — Type 2
Finey Creek 3.7 Cold — Type 2
Scales Creek 3.6 untyped — Type 2
West Branch Eagle River 3.6 untyped — Type 2
Monehan Creek 3.6 Warm — Type 2
McCarthy Creek 3.6 untyped — Type 2
Silver River 3.5 Cold — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Big Betsy River 3.4 Cool — Type 2
Fulton Creek 3.4 Cold — Type 2
Capone Creek 3.4 Cold — Type 2
Medora River 3.3 untyped — Type 2
Saint Johns Creek 3.1 Cold — Type 2
Garden City Creek 3.1 Cold — Type 2
Finns Creek 3.0 Cold — Type 2
Vulcan Creek 3.0 untyped — Type 2
Shawmut Creek 2.9 untyped — Type 2
Sawmill Creek 2.8 untyped — Type 1, Type 2
Owl Creek 2.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Spring Creek 2.6 Cold — Type 2
Eagle River 2.6 untyped — Type 1, Type 2
Begunn Creek 2.5 untyped — Type 2
Cedar Creek 2.4 untyped — Type 2
Camp Creek 2.4 Cold — Type 2
Butch Creek 2.4 untyped — —
Jacobs Creek 2.4 Cold-transitional — —
Keranen Creek 2.3 untyped — Type 2
Brewery Creek 2.2 untyped — Type 2
Big Creek 2.2 Cold — —
Le Chance Creek 2.1 untyped — Type 2
Little Betsy River 2.1 Cool — Type 2
Gardeners Creek 2.1 Cold — Type 2
Bailey Creek 2.0 untyped — Type 1, Type 2
Caledonia Creek 2.0 untyped — Type 2
Quincy Creek 1.9 Cold — —
Red Creek 1.8 Cold — Type 2
Aetna Creek 1.8 Cold — Type 2
Worham Creek 1.8 untyped — Type 2
Ahola Creek 1.7 untyped — Type 2
Lovell Creek 1.7 Cold — Type 2
Hoar Creek 1.6 untyped — Type 2
Mud Creek 1.6 untyped — Type 2
Sucker Creek 1.5 Cold — —
Farlow Creek 1.0 untyped — Type 2
Winters Creek 1.0 untyped — Type 2
Mendota Canal 0.7 Cool — —
Dubuque Creek 0.7 untyped — —
Greenier Creek 0.4 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

126,146 acres in 193 units, which is 18.0% of the 699,037 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 46,789 37% 22
The Nature Conservancy 33,716 27% 4
US Forest Service 14,346 11% 2
Keweenaw Community Forest Company 7,698 6% 2
Houghton Keweenaw Conservation District 3,677 3% 3
County land 3,333 3% 4
City and township land 2,789 2% 22
Gratiot Lake Conservancy 2,138 2% 5

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.