BirdTrout

Lone Lake-Ocqueoc Watershed, Michigan

885 miles of mapped stream across 796 square miles of drainage in Alcona, Presque Isle counties, in 48 named streams. Michigan designates 197 of those miles as trout water, on 28 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 04070003 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

885 mi
of mapped stream
1,242 NHD reaches
796 sq mi
drainage area
509,209 acres
125,487 ac
public land
24.6% of the basin · 124 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 17% of this basin's stream miles (150.3 of 885); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

46.3 of the 150.3 typed miles in this basin — 31% — 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 71.4 mi, high 42.1 mi, very low 18.7 mi, low 18.1 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

796 square miles, 885.2 mapped stream miles, 48 named streams, and 28 of them designated trout water over 196.8 miles. The Ocqueoc River is the longest water here at 37.2 miles and MDNR types it warm, though it carries Type 4 reaches; the Black River, 15.4 miles, types cold and holds this basin's only Blue Ribbon designation. Of the 150.3 miles typed — 17% of the network — 66.9 are cool, 42.4 cold, 37.1 warm and 3.9 cold-transitional, a more evenly divided profile than most basins on this map. The South Branch Devils River adds 12 miles of cool Type 4 water. Public ground is 125,487 acres, 24.6% of the basin, with 97,204 acres of state land and an unusual entry beneath it: 9,628 acres held jointly by NOAA and the State of Michigan. No gauge here carries a July record. Brook trout, brown trout, rainbow trout and Chinook salmon have been stocked.

Every named stream in the basin

All 48 of them, longest first. 2 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
Ocqueoc River 37.2 Warm — Type 1, Type 2, Type 4
Swan River 17.3 Cool — Type 1, Type 2
Black River Blue Ribbon 15.4 Cold — Type 1, Type 2
South Branch Devils River 12.0 Cool — Type 2, Type 4
Silver Creek 10.9 Cold — Type 2
Grand Lake Outlet 10.2 Warm — —
Black Mallard River 10.0 Cool — —
Mill Creek 9.5 Cool — Type 1, Type 2
Little Ocqueoc River 9.4 Cold — Type 2
Little Trout River 9.2 Cool — —
North Branch Devils River 8.9 Warm — Type 2
Trout River 8.4 Cool — Type 1, Type 2
Monaghan Creek 8.0 Warm — —
McLary Creek 6.4 Cool — —
Butternut Creek 6.1 untyped — Type 2
Little Black River 6.1 Cool — —
North Branch Black River 6.0 Cool — Type 2
Berlinski Creek 5.6 Cool — Type 2
Mulligan Creek 5.5 Cool — —
Long Lake Creek 5.3 Warm — Type 1, Type 2
Haynes Creek 5.0 Cold — Type 2
Holcomb Creek 4.8 Cool — Type 2
Greene Creek 4.7 Cool — Type 2
West Branch Little Black River 4.6 untyped — —
Norwegian Creek 3.9 untyped — Type 2
Clinton Creek 3.4 Warm — —
Elliot Creek 3.3 Cool — Type 2
Mud Creek 3.2 Warm — Type 2
Warren Creek 3.2 untyped — —
Fox Creek 2.8 untyped — Type 2
Liston Creek 2.8 untyped — Type 2
Schaut Creek 2.8 Cool — —
Three Creek 2.6 Cool — —
Devils River 2.4 untyped — Type 1, Type 2
Schalks Creek 2.4 Warm — —
Hartwick Creek 2.3 untyped — Type 2
Precore Creek 2.3 Cool — Type 2
Indian Creek 2.0 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Gauthier Creek 2.0 Cold — Type 2
DeRocher Creek 2.0 untyped — Type 2
Lone Pine Creek 1.9 Cool — —
Schmidt Creek 1.8 Cold — —
Grace Creek 1.8 Cool — —
Fitzgerald Creek 1.8 Warm — —
Cranberry Creek 1.0 Cool — —
Nagels Creek 0.9 untyped — Type 2
Grass Creek 0.8 Warm — —
Mindack Creek 0.7 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

125,487 acres in 124 units, which is 24.6% of the 509,209 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 97,204 77% 42
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration;State of Michigan 9,628 8% 1
US Forest Service 6,139 5% 1
State of Michigan 4,427 4% 1
Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) 4,044 3% 2
Huron Pines 1,558 1% 2
Local Government land 1,217 1% 29
Little Traverse Conservancy 633 1% 6

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 0 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 stocked
Brown trout
Salmo trutta
 55–63°F 45–70°F stocked
Rainbow trout
Oncorhynchus mykiss
 55–64°F 44–70°F stocked
Chinook salmon
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
 50–58°F 42–68°F 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.