BirdTrout

Baraboo River Watershed, Wisconsin

721 miles of mapped stream across 655 square miles of drainage in Sauk, Juneau, Vernon, Monroe, Columbia, Richland counties, in 22 named streams. Wisconsin designates 88 of those miles as trout water, on 14 streams.

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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 Wisconsin DNR's own classification of the stream, not a measurement, except at the gauge dots, which read live. Grey is water Wisconsin DNR has not typed.

The watershed in numbers

HUC8 07070004 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

721 mi
of mapped stream
1,337 NHD reaches
655 sq mi
drainage area
419,430 acres
2,277 ac
public land
0.5% of the basin · 4 units

Cold, cool and warm water

WDNR's trout stream classification, which types the stream by the trout population it supports rather than by measuring the water — every reach it calls Class I, II or III carries WDNR's own cold designation. It covers 11% of this basin's stream miles (76.8 of 721); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

76.8 of the 76.8 typed miles in this basin — 100% — are cold or cold-transitional water. Every typed reach carries the same class, which is as likely to be the coverage as the water: Wisconsin DNR has typed 11% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Baraboo drains 655 square miles of Sauk, Juneau, Vernon and Monroe counties around the quartzite ranges, and its network is small: 22 named streams among 721 mapped miles, 14 of them designated over 88 miles, and 77 miles classified cold. The Baraboo River runs 45.3 miles at Class II and III and the Little Baraboo 20.8 at Class II; Seeley Creek's 18.5 miles are Class II, Seymour Creek's 12.0 Class III, and the Cazenovia Branch and Rowley Creek run 10.9 miles apiece as Class I. Public ground is 2,277 acres and almost all of it is the 2,266-acre Pine Island Wildlife Area on the Wisconsin River — the coulee fishing here is on private ground. No gauge in the basin holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 22 of them, longest first. 11 have a page of their own and are linked; the rest are in the app. The class column is Wisconsin DNR's designation of that stream. "Now" is the live USGS reading where a gauge stands in that stream.

Stream Miles Class Now Designation
Baraboo River 45.3 Cold — Class II, Class III
Little Baraboo River 20.8 Cold — Class II
Seeley Creek 18.5 Cold — Class II
Seymour Creek 12.0 untyped — Class III
Cazenovia Branch 10.9 Cold — Class I
Rowley Creek 10.9 Cold — Class I
Twin Creek 9.4 untyped — —
South Branch Creek 9.1 untyped — Class III
West Branch Baraboo River 8.8 untyped — Class III
Leech Creek 7.8 Cold — Class II
Hay Creek 7.4 Cold — Class II
Carr Valley Branch 6.9 untyped — —
Babb Creek 6.5 untyped — —
Spring Valley Creek 5.9 Cold — Class I, Class II
Dilly Creek 5.5 untyped — —
Lydon Valley Creek 4.9 untyped — Class III
Beaver Creek 4.8 untyped — —
Furnace Creek 4.8 untyped — —
McGlynn Creek 4.7 Cold — Class I
Silver Creek 4.4 untyped — —
Boulder Creek 3.2 Cold — Class I
Big Creek 0.0 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

2,277 acres in 4 units, which is 0.5% of the 419,430 acres the basin covers. Private inholdings carried in the same source file are excluded, here and on the map.

Managing agency Acres Share Units
Wisconsin DNR 2,266 100% 3
County forest 11 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 Wisconsin driftless, 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

51 insects are recorded from the Wisconsin driftless. 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.