BirdTrout

Saginaw Watershed, Michigan

475 miles of mapped stream across 251 square miles of drainage in Saginaw county, in 41 named streams. Michigan designates 50 of those miles as trout water, on 5 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 04080206 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

475 mi
of mapped stream
659 NHD reaches
251 sq mi
drainage area
160,774 acres
6,829 ac
public land
4.2% of the basin · 130 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 23% of this basin's stream miles (107.9 of 475); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

0.0 of the 107.9 typed miles in this basin — 0% — are cold or cold-transitional water. Every typed reach carries the same class, which is as likely to be the coverage as the water: MDNR has typed 23% of it.

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 88.9 mi, very low 19.0 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The smallest watershed on this map by drainage at 251 square miles, and one of the warmest: all 107.9 miles MDNR has typed here are warm, with no cool, cold-transitional or cold water in the sample. That covers 23% of the 475.2 mapped stream miles. 5 of the 41 named streams are designated trout water over 50.5 miles, the least of any basin on this map, and none holds a Blue Ribbon designation. The Saginaw River itself, 22.3 miles and the longest water here, is untyped by MDNR though it carries a Type 1 designation; Cheboyganing Creek runs 22.2 miles warm. Several of the named streams are drains. The gradient is flat — 88.9 of the typed miles low and 19 very low, with none classed high or medium. Public land is 6,829 acres, 4.2% of the basin, across 130 mostly municipal and county units. Northern pike and walleye have been stocked.

Every named stream in the basin

All 41 of them, longest first. 4 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
Saginaw River 22.3 untyped 64.6°F Type 1
Cheboyganing Creek 22.2 Warm — Type 1
English Drain 9.1 Warm — —
Blumfield Creek 7.9 Warm — —
Squaconning Creek 7.4 Warm — —
Dutch Creek 5.8 Warm — Type 1
Rousch Drain 5.4 Warm — —
Kochville and Frankenlust Drain 5.0 Warm — —
West Branch Squaconning Creek 4.9 untyped — —
Jordon Drain 4.8 Warm — —
Cool Creek 4.4 Warm — —
Klauss Drain 4.0 Warm — —
Weaver Drain 3.7 Warm — —
Murry Drain 3.6 Warm — —
Tinglan Drain 3.5 Warm — —
Goetz Drain 3.3 untyped — —
Kochville Drain 3.3 untyped — —
North Branch Squaconning Creek 3.2 Warm — —
Hecht Drain 3.2 Warm — —
Branch Number Three Squaconning Creek 2.9 untyped — —
Richville Drain 2.9 Warm — —
South Branch Kochville and Frankenlust Drain 2.9 Warm — —
North Branch Kochville and Frankenlust Drain 2.9 untyped — —
Heindel Drain 2.5 Warm — —
Weiss Drain 2.4 untyped — —
Ortner Drain 2.3 untyped — —
Kochville and Branches Drain 2.2 untyped — —
Schmidt Drain 2.2 untyped — —
Ekund Drain 2.0 Warm — —
Armon Drain 1.9 Warm — —
Fink Drain 1.8 Warm — —
Douglas Drain 1.7 untyped — —
Zewerk Drain 1.6 untyped — —
Lambert Drain 1.5 untyped — —
Columbia Drain 1.5 untyped — —
Trombley Drain 1.4 untyped — —
Bauer Drain 1.1 untyped — —
Wagner Drain 0.9 untyped — —
Lotter Drain 0.8 untyped — —
Tittabawassee River 0.2 untyped — Type 1
Shiawassee River 0.1 untyped — Type 1

Public land in the watershed

6,829 acres in 130 units, which is 4.2% of the 160,774 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 4,364 64% 3
Local Government land 890 13% 75
City and township land 618 9% 29
Saginaw County 420 6% 1
Other State Land 300 4% 7
County land 93 1% 2
City of Saginaw 40 1% 2
Buena Vista Charter Township;Buena Vista Lions Club 31 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.

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
Northern pike
Esox lucius
 60–70°F 40–78°F stocked
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.