BirdTrout

Buffalo-Whitewater Watershed, Wisconsin

1,529 miles of mapped stream across 1,391 square miles of drainage in Buffalo, Trempealeau, Jackson, Eau Claire, Pepin counties, in 45 named streams. Wisconsin designates 222 of those miles as trout water, on 24 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 07040003 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,529 mi
of mapped stream
3,618 NHD reaches
1,391 sq mi
drainage area
890,373 acres
2,884 ac
public land
0.3% of the basin · 6 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 15% of this basin's stream miles (230.5 of 1,529); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

230.5 of the 230.5 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 15% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Buffalo-Whitewater is driftless valley country in Buffalo, Trempealeau, Jackson and Eau Claire counties, and like its neighbours on this side of the state it is almost entirely private ground: 3,499 public acres across 1,391 square miles, the largest piece of it the 2,066-acre Whitman Dam Wildlife Area on the Mississippi. The trout water is in the coulees. The Buffalo River runs 71.2 miles at Class II and III, Waumandee Creek 35.6 miles at Class II and the Little Waumandee 21.6, Eagle Creek 17.8 and Elk Creek 16.4, both Class II, and the South Fork Buffalo 16.7 miles at Class I and II. WDNR designates 222 of the basin's 400 mapped miles on 24 of 45 named streams and classifies 287 miles cold. No gauge here holds a July record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 45 of them, longest first. 15 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
Buffalo River 71.2 Cold — Class II, Class III
Waumandee Creek 35.6 Cold — Class II
Little Waumandee Creek 21.6 Cold — Class II
Eagle Creek 17.8 Cold — Class II
South Fork Buffalo River 16.7 Cold — Class I, Class II
Elk Creek 16.4 Cold — Class II
North Fork Buffalo River 15.6 Cold — Class I, Class II
Trout Creek 15.5 Cold — Class II, Class III
Pine Creek 13.6 Cold — Class I
Harvey Creek 10.7 untyped — Class III
Mississippi River 10.6 untyped — —
Peeso Creek 10.4 untyped — Class III
South Fork Elk Creek 8.8 untyped — Class III
Tamarack Creek 8.8 Cold — Class II
Big Creek 8.2 Cold — Class II, Class III
King Creek 7.7 Cold — Class I
Deer Creek 7.1 Cold — Class II
Hutchinson Creek 7.0 untyped — —
Rossman Creek 6.6 Cold — Class II, Class III
Mill Creek 6.4 untyped — —
Farrington Creek 6.0 untyped — —
Johnson Valley Creek 5.5 Cold — Class I
Adams Creek 4.8 Cold — Class II, Class III
Riesch Creek 4.5 untyped — —
Iron Creek 4.5 untyped — —
Spring Creek 4.5 untyped — —
By Golly Creek 4.4 untyped — —
Pratt Creek 4.3 untyped — —
Hadley Creek 4.3 untyped — —
Brownlee Creek 4.2 untyped — —
Threemile Creek 3.9 untyped — —
Lindsay Creek 3.8 Cold — Class II, Class III
Holmes Creek 3.7 untyped — —
Brewery Creek 3.5 untyped — —
Rindahl Creek 3.4 Cold — Class I
Jermstad Creek 3.1 Cold — Class II
Little Tamarack Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Fimian Creek 2.6 untyped — —
Solum Creek 2.4 Cold — Class I
Kay Creek 2.1 Cold — Class I
Screech Owl Creek 1.9 untyped — —
Indian Slough 1.6 untyped — —
Chippewa River 0.9 untyped — —
Government Light Slough 0.8 untyped — —
Smith Slough 0.4 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

2,884 acres in 6 units, which is 0.3% of the 890,373 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 2,884 100% 5
US Fish and Wildlife Service 0 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 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.