BirdTrout

Pine Watershed, Michigan

1,401 miles of mapped stream across 1,026 square miles of drainage in Gratiot, Isabella, Midland, Montcalm counties, in 69 named streams. Michigan designates 449 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 04080202 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,401 mi
of mapped stream
1,738 NHD reaches
1,026 sq mi
drainage area
656,390 acres
23,149 ac
public land
3.5% of the basin · 180 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 39% of this basin's stream miles (552.4 of 1,401); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

120.1 of the 552.4 typed miles in this basin — 22% — are cold or cold-transitional water. The dominant class is warm.

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: low 210.2 mi, medium 192.3 mi, very low 91.9 mi, high 58.0 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Pine River runs 104.2 miles, types cool and holds this basin's Blue Ribbon designation; the Chippewa River, 91.8 miles, types warm. Between them they set out a basin that is genuinely mixed rather than one thing: of 552.4 typed miles, 238.2 are warm, 194.1 cool, 65.3 cold-transitional and 54.8 cold. That typing covers 39% of the 1,401.1 mapped stream miles, the most thorough sample of any basin on this map, so the mixture is real and not an artefact of coverage. 32 of the 69 named streams are designated trout water over 449 miles. The North Branch Chippewa adds 50.3 miles of cool water; Salt Creek and Little Salt Creek, 58.5 miles between them, run warm. Public land is scarce — 23,149 acres, 3.5% of the basin, across 180 units, much of it held by the DNR's Wildlife Division rather than as state forest.

Every named stream in the basin

All 69 of them, longest first. 18 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
Pine River Blue Ribbon 104.2 Cool — Type 1, Type 2
Chippewa River 91.8 Warm — Type 1, Type 2
North Branch Chippewa River 50.3 Cool — Type 1, Type 2
Salt Creek 36.9 Warm — Type 1
Little Salt Creek 21.6 Warm — Type 1
Bush Creek 16.3 Warm — —
Pony Creek 16.1 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Potter Creek 15.8 Warm — —
Coldwater River 13.3 untyped — Type 1
Sucker Creek 11.6 Warm — Type 2
Onion Creek 9.4 Warm — —
Walker Creek 9.0 Cold — Type 2
Roundy Branch 8.3 Cold — Type 2
North Branch Pine River 7.1 Cool — Type 2
Honeyoey Creek 7.0 Cool — —
Carpenter Creek 6.7 Cool — —
Skunk Creek 6.6 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Thatcher Creek 6.5 untyped — —
Chippewa Creek 5.8 Cool — —
South Branch Pine River 5.7 Cool — Type 2
Rattail Creek 5.7 Cold — Type 2
Tanner Creek 5.3 Cold — —
Coles Creek 5.2 Cool — —
Wolf Creek 5.1 Cold-transitional 59.9°F Type 2
Figg Drain 5.1 Cool — —
Centerline Drain 4.9 untyped — —
Mud Creek 4.7 Cool — —
Turkey Creek 4.7 untyped — —
Frost Drain 4.7 Warm — —
Horse Creek 4.3 Warm — —
Cedar Creek 4.2 untyped — Type 2, Type 4
Indian Creek 4.2 Cold — Type 2
Isabella Creek 4.1 Cold — Type 2
West Branch Chippewa River 4.0 Warm — Type 2
Decker Creek 4.0 Cold — Type 2
Black Creek 4.0 Warm — —
Sugar Creek 4.0 Warm — —
Butts Creek 3.9 Cold — Type 2
Benjamin Creek 3.6 Cold — Type 2
Schofield Creek 3.6 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Childs Creek 3.6 Warm — —
Johnson Creek 3.5 Cold — Type 2
Delaney Creek 3.5 untyped — Type 2
Three Lake Creek 3.4 Cool — —
Kirch Drain 3.3 untyped — —
Brue Drain 3.2 untyped — —
Baker Drain 3.1 untyped — —
Jackson Street Drain 3.0 untyped — —
Miller Creek 2.9 untyped — Type 2
Bamber Creek 2.9 untyped — —
Hogg Creek 2.9 Cold-transitional — —
Stony Brook 2.8 untyped — Type 1
Hagerman Drain 2.8 untyped — —
Parcher Drain 2.7 untyped — —
Huber Drain 2.7 untyped — —
Atkinson Creek 2.6 untyped — Type 2
Wyant Drain 2.6 untyped — —
Mission Creek 2.5 Warm — Type 1
Browne Creek 2.1 Cold — Type 2
Sherman Creek 2.1 Cool — —
Jewel Creek 2.0 Cold — Type 2
Brown Creek 2.0 Cold — Type 2
Tyman Branch 1.8 Cool — —
Dice Drain 1.7 Warm — —
Redstone Drain 1.5 untyped — —
Bass Lake Drain 1.4 untyped — —
Thrasher Creek 1.2 untyped — —
Helmer Creek 1.2 Cold — —
Newark and Arcadia Drain 0.8 Warm — —

Public land in the watershed

23,149 acres in 180 units, which is 3.5% of the 656,390 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 9,099 39% 21
Michigan DNR - Wildlife Division 6,834 30% 2
Local Government land 2,269 10% 59
Michigan DNR Wildlife Division 1,451 6% 1
City and township land 1,059 5% 17
Isabella County 484 2% 4
Chippewa Watershed Conservancy 441 2% 12
County land 401 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.

Species present

Recorded by MDNR at 1 survey station 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
Smallmouth bass
Micropterus dolomieu
 67–75°F 55–85°F surveyed
Walleye
Sander vitreus
 62–72°F 50–80°F stocked

Best time to fish

The hatch calendar for southern 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

47 insects are recorded from southern 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.