BirdTrout

St. Marys Watershed, Michigan

2,997 miles of mapped stream across 1,910 square miles of drainage, in 86 named streams. Michigan designates 140 of those miles as trout water, on 12 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 04200002 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

2,997 mi
of mapped stream
8,363 NHD reaches
1,910 sq mi
drainage area
1,222,647 acres
101,618 ac
public land
8.3% of the basin · 173 units

Cold, cool and warm water

MDNR's Valley Segment Ecological Classification, which types the valley segment rather than measuring the water. It covers 7% of this basin's stream miles (209.8 of 2,997); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

51.0 of the 209.8 typed miles in this basin — 24% — 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 127.3 mi, high 65.8 mi, very low 13.3 mi, low 3.4 mi.

What makes this watershed distinctive

A connecting-waters basin rather than a river basin: 1,910 square miles and 2,996.9 mapped stream miles, and the longest waters in it — the Saint Marys River at 58.8 miles, the Garden River at 51.7, the Upper Echo at 22 and Anderson Creek at 21.6 — are all untyped by MDNR. Of the 209.8 miles that have been classified, which is 7% of the network, 83.1 are cool, 75.7 warm, 31.3 cold and 19.7 cold-transitional. 12 of the 86 named streams are designated trout water over 140 miles, and none holds a Blue Ribbon designation. The Munuscong River, 37.3 miles, is the longest typed water here and it runs warm. Public ground is 101,618 acres, 8.3% of the basin, with 67,050 acres of state land, 14,507 of national forest and 5,784 held by Michigan State University. No gauge here carries a July record, and MDNR has no survey station in the basin.

Every named stream in the basin

All 86 of them, longest first. None has a page of its own yet; all of them 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
Saint Marys River 58.8 untyped — —
Garden River 51.7 untyped — —
Munuscong River 37.3 Warm — Type 2
Upper Echo River 22.0 untyped — —
Anderson Creek 21.6 untyped — —
Waiska River 18.9 Warm — —
East Branch Munuscong River 18.0 Cool — Type 2
Little Munuscong River 17.8 Cool — Type 2
West Branch Waiska River 17.4 Cool — Type 2
Charlotte River 17.3 Warm — —
Little Garden River 17.1 untyped — —
Bar River 11.9 untyped — —
South Branch East Branch Waiska River 11.0 Cold-transitional — —
Sucker Creek 11.0 untyped — —
Bennett Creek 10.8 untyped — —
Coffee Creek 10.6 untyped — —
Crystal Creek 10.2 untyped — —
Big Carp River 10.2 untyped — —
Vaporem Creek 9.7 untyped — —
Driving Creek 9.3 untyped — —
School Creek 9.1 Cool — —
Hutton Creek 8.9 Cold-transitional — Type 2
Root River 8.8 untyped — —
West Davignon Creek 8.6 untyped — —
Hannah Creek 8.6 Cool — —
East Davignon Creek 8.6 untyped — —
Bar Creek 8.4 untyped — —
Cuddy Creek 8.3 untyped — —
Taylor Creek 8.2 Cool — Type 2
Parker Creek 7.8 Warm — Type 2
Hickler Creek 7.8 Cool — —
Little Carp River 7.6 untyped — —
South Branch Gogomain River 7.4 Cold-transitional — —
Shewfelt Creek 7.4 untyped — —
Campus Creek 7.1 untyped — —
Two Tree River 6.3 untyped — —
McMahen Creek 6.1 Cold — —
South Creek 6.1 untyped — —
Ermatinger Creek 5.9 Cool — —
East Branch Waiska River 5.6 Warm — —
West Root River 5.6 untyped — —
Stobie Creek 5.6 untyped — —
Gogomain River 5.5 Cool — —
Beaver Meadow Creek 5.5 Warm — —
Fort Creek 5.4 untyped — —
Rapson Creek 5.3 Cold — Type 2
Clear Creek 5.2 Cold — Type 2
Demoreux Creek 5.1 Warm — Type 2
Sanderson Creek 5.0 Warm — Type 2
Little Waiska Creek 4.9 Cold — —
West Branch Gogomain River 4.8 untyped — —
Stuart Creek 4.8 untyped — —
Hursley Creek 4.4 Cool — —
Sailors Creek 4.3 Cool — —
Spring Creek 4.3 Cool — —
Elm Creek 4.3 untyped — —
South Branch Waiska River 4.2 untyped — —
Sylvester Creek 4.1 untyped — Type 2
Carlton Creek 4.1 Warm — —
Pearl Creek 4.1 untyped — —
Bons Creek 4.1 Cold — —
Ashmun Creek 4.0 Cool — —
North Branch Orrs Creek 3.9 untyped — —
South Branch Orrs Creek 3.7 untyped — —
Wilmar Creek 3.7 Cool — —
Iron Creek 3.5 untyped — —
White Creek 3.2 Cold — —
McFarland Creek 2.9 Cool — —
Coldwater Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Mill Creek 2.7 untyped — —
Rock Bottom Creek 2.7 Cool — —
Horseshoe Creek 2.5 untyped — —
Cassidy Creek 2.5 untyped — —
Mission Creek 2.4 untyped — —
Jordon Creek 2.2 untyped — —
Orrs Creek 2.2 Cold-transitional — —
Frechette Creek 2.1 Cool — —
Maud Creek 1.9 untyped — —
Dead Horse Creek 1.8 untyped — —
Austin Creek 1.3 untyped — —
Clark Creek 1.2 untyped — —
Beaver Dam Creek 1.1 untyped — —
Seymour Creek 1.1 untyped — —
Letz Creek 1.0 untyped — —
Coulters Creek 1.0 untyped — —
Lower Echo River 0.9 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

101,618 acres in 173 units, which is 8.3% of the 1,222,647 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 67,051 66% 18
US Forest Service 14,507 14% 2
Michigan State University 5,784 6% 2
Local Government land 3,977 4% 95
Ontario Parks 3,546 3% 2
Land trusts and conservancies 2,220 2% 8
Little Traverse Conservancy 1,775 2% 9
Michigan Nature Association 946 1% 3

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.