BirdTrout

Black River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,800 miles of mapped stream across 2,276 square miles of drainage in Clark, Jackson, Taylor, Trempealeau, Monroe, Wood, La Crosse counties, in 86 named streams. Wisconsin designates 321 of those miles as trout water, on 48 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 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 07040007 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,800 mi
of mapped stream
3,536 NHD reaches
2,276 sq mi
drainage area
1,456,561 acres
299,460 ac
public land
20.6% of the basin · 14 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 20% of this basin's stream miles (365.1 of 1,800); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

365.1 of the 365.1 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 20% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Black River runs 95.1 miles through this basin carrying all three of WDNR's trout classes at different points, from the Taylor County headwaters to the sand plain. Around it Robinson Creek runs 28.9 miles and Halls Creek 26.5 at Class II, Cunningham Creek 21.8 and Fleming Creek 19.9 at Class I. WDNR designates 321 of the basin's 640 mapped stream miles on 48 of its 86 named streams, and classifies 431 miles cold. Public ground is 299,849 acres across 2,276 square miles of Clark, Jackson, Taylor and Trempealeau counties, and it is county forest and state forest rather than federal: Jackson County Forest at 120,525 acres, the Black River State Forest at 69,397 and Clark County Forest at 67,908. No gauge in the basin holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 86 of them, longest first. 32 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
Black River 95.1 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
Robinson Creek 28.9 Cold — Class II
Halls Creek 26.5 Cold — Class II
Cunningham Creek 21.8 Cold — Class I
Fleming Creek 19.9 untyped — Class I
North Fork Beaver Creek 19.5 Cold — Class II
Beaver Creek 18.5 Cold — Class II
East Fork Halls Creek 15.4 Cold — Class II
Levis Creek 15.1 Cold — Class I, Class II
South Fork Beaver Creek 13.9 Cold — Class II
Clear Creek 11.7 Cold — Class I, Class III
Davis Creek 11.3 Cold — Class II
Dickey Creek 10.4 untyped — —
Sand Creek 10.4 Cold — Class I
Morrison Creek 10.0 untyped — —
Mollies Creek 9.8 untyped — —
Hawk Creek 9.8 Cold — Class I, Class III
French Creek 9.7 Cold — Class II
Little Tamarack Creek 9.2 untyped — —
South Fork Halls Creek 8.9 Cold — Class II
Soper Creek 8.5 Cold — Class I
Arnold Creek 8.4 untyped — —
Wyman Creek 8.2 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
Big Creek 8.2 Cold — Class II
Trout Run 7.8 untyped — Class III
Hay Creek 6.8 untyped — —
Hay Meadow Creek 6.8 untyped — —
Spencer Creek 6.6 Cold — Class I, Class II
Coffee Creek 6.5 Cold — Class I
Indian Grave Creek 6.3 untyped — —
Rathbone Creek 6.2 Cold — Class II
Grant Creek 5.7 untyped — —
Mill Creek 5.5 untyped — —
Roaring Creek 5.4 untyped — —
Vismal Creek 5.3 Cold — Class I
Shamrock Creek 5.3 untyped — Class III
Cisna Creek 5.2 Cold — Class I
Stony Creek 5.2 untyped — Class III
Bear Creek 4.9 Cold — Class I
Hardies Creek 4.9 untyped — Class III
Perry Creek 4.6 untyped — —
Town Creek 4.6 untyped — —
Wilson Creek 4.6 untyped — —
Dutch Creek 4.5 Cold — Class I
Trowe Drain 4.3 untyped — —
Allen Creek 4.2 Cold — Class I
Stanton Creek 4.2 untyped — —
Jenkins Valley Creek 4.2 Cold — Class II
Woodward Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Kenyon Creek 3.9 Cold — Class II
Snow Creek 3.8 Cold — Class I
Silver Creek 3.8 Cold — Class II
Hayden Creek 3.7 untyped — —
Washington Coulee Creek 3.7 Cold — Class I
Dustin Creek 3.7 Cold — Class I
Ketchum Creek 3.6 untyped — —
East Branch Trout Run Creek 3.6 Cold — Class II
Ranch Creek 3.4 Cold — Class II
Rudd Creek 3.4 untyped — —
Salzwedel Coulee Creek 3.3 Cold — Class II
White Creek 3.3 untyped — —
Sour Creek 3.3 untyped — Class II
Spring Creek 3.2 untyped — —
Papoose Creek 3.1 Cold — Class II
Joe Coulee Creek 3.1 Cold — Class I
Printz Creek 3.1 untyped — —
Fisher Creek 3.0 untyped — —
Wolf Creek 3.0 untyped — —
Glenn Creek 2.9 untyped — Class III
Valentine Creek 2.8 Cold — Class I
Paines Creek 2.7 untyped — —
Pine Grove Creek 2.6 untyped — —
Black Slough 2.5 untyped — —
Columbus Creek 2.2 Cold — Class I
Pigeon Creek 2.1 untyped — Class III
Little Creek 2.1 untyped — —
Kunes Creek 2.1 untyped — —
Zahrte Creek 1.8 untyped — —
North Branch Douglas Creek 1.8 Cold — Class I
Madison Creek 1.6 untyped — —
Wrightsville Creek 1.4 untyped — —
Pollies Creek 1.1 untyped — —
Jack Creek 0.9 untyped — —
East Fork Black River 0.8 untyped — —
Red Creek 0.7 untyped — —
Little Black River 0.0 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

299,460 acres in 14 units, which is 20.6% of the 1,456,561 acres the basin covers. Private inholdings carried in the same source file are excluded, here and on the map.

Managing agency Acres Share Units
County forest 204,690 68% 5
Wisconsin DNR 81,102 27% 8
US Forest Service 13,668 5% 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 northern Wisconsin, 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 northern Wisconsin. 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.