BirdTrout

Michigamme Watershed, Michigan

1,042 miles of mapped stream across 724 square miles of drainage, in 60 named streams. Michigan designates 373 of those miles as trout water, on 44 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 04030107 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,042 mi
of mapped stream
3,942 NHD reaches
724 sq mi
drainage area
463,438 acres
136,143 ac
public land
29.4% of the basin · 51 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 16% of this basin's stream miles (170.3 of 1,042); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

43.2 of the 170.3 typed miles in this basin — 25% — 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 98.4 mi, high 52.1 mi, low 14.1 mi, very low 5.8 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

724 square miles and 1,042.3 mapped stream miles, with 44 of the 60 named streams designated as trout water over 373.3 miles. The Fence River carries the basin's only Blue Ribbon designation, and it is untyped by MDNR across its 17.4 miles — its East Branch, 18.9 miles, types cold-transitional and holds Type 3 water. The Michigamme River runs 66.9 miles and types cool, as do the Peshekee and its West Branch, 54.2 miles between them. Of the 170.3 miles MDNR has classified — 16% of the network — 121.4 are cool, 29.8 cold-transitional, 13.4 cold and 5.8 warm, with the gradient running mostly medium and high. Public land is 136,143 acres, 29.4% of the basin, in 51 units: 109,341 acres of state land, 10,962 of national forest, and 9,731 held by The Nature Conservancy. No gauge here carries a July record and MDNR has no survey station in the basin.

Every named stream in the basin

All 60 of them, longest first. 21 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
Michigamme River 66.9 Cool — Type 2
Peshekee River 31.1 Cool — Type 2
West Branch Peshekee River 23.1 Cool — Type 2
East Branch Fence River 18.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Fence River Blue Ribbon 17.4 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Deer River 14.0 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Trout Falls Creek 13.9 Cold — Type 2
Mitchigan River 12.8 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
West Branch Fence River 12.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Wilson Creek 12.2 Cold-transitional — Type 2
McCutcheon Creek 11.7 Cold — Type 2
Spruce River 10.5 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Nookomis nbi 9.0 Cold-transitional — —
Spurr River 8.8 Cool — —
Dishno Creek 8.0 Cool — Type 2
Smith Creek 7.6 Cold — Type 2, Type 3
Baraga Creek 7.3 Cool — Type 2
Margeson Creek 6.5 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Clarks Creek 6.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Mill Creek 6.1 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Gambles Creek 5.5 Cool — Type 2
Camp Ten Creek 5.4 untyped — Type 2
Caps Creek 5.2 Cold — Type 2
Gages Creek 4.9 Cold — Type 2
Nestoria Creek 4.9 Cool — —
Nelligan Creek 4.8 Cool — —
Parks Creek 4.8 Cold-transitional — —
Premo Creek 4.7 untyped — Type 2
Twenty Six Creek 4.7 untyped — Type 2
Kukura Creek 4.7 Cold-transitional — —
Fribley Creek 4.4 Cool — Type 2
Johnson Creek 4.4 Cold — Type 2
West Branch Mitchigan River 3.9 untyped — Type 2
Camp Creek 3.8 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
Camp Six Creek 3.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Camp Five Creek 3.3 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Camp Eight Creek 3.2 Cool — Type 2
Crescent Pond Outlet 3.1 untyped — —
Kelso River 3.0 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Shenky Creek 2.9 untyped — Type 2
Noyes Creek 2.9 untyped — —
Nolenchec Creek 2.7 Cold-transitional — Type 2, Type 3
Petticoat Creek 2.6 Cool — Type 2
Flanigan Creek 2.4 untyped — Type 2
Leonard Creek 2.4 Cold — Type 2
La Fournier Creek 2.4 untyped — Type 2
Canal Town Creek 2.4 Cool — —
Threemile Creek 2.3 untyped — Type 2
Ned Lake Creek 2.3 untyped — —
Hickman Creek 2.1 Cool — Type 2, Type 3
Beaver Creek 2.0 untyped — Type 2
Ephriam Creek 2.0 Cool — —
Larson Creek 1.6 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Jones Camp Creek 1.5 untyped — Type 2, Type 3
West Branch McCutcheon Creek 1.4 untyped — Type 2
Michigamme Slough 1.3 untyped — —
Davison Creek 1.2 Cool — —
Kelso Creek 1.2 Cold-transitional — —
Little Bull Diversion Canal 0.8 untyped — —
White Horse Bay 0.1 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

136,143 acres in 51 units, which is 29.4% of the 463,438 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 109,341 80% 26
US Forest Service 10,962 8% 3
The Nature Conservancy 9,731 7% 1
Local Government land 4,471 3% 7
Land trusts and conservancies 965 1% 1
City and township land 381 0% 3
Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy 156 0% 3
County land 58 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.

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.