BirdTrout

Coon-Yellow Watershed, Wisconsin

1,747 miles of mapped stream across 1,424 square miles of drainage in Vernon, Crawford, La Crosse, Monroe counties, in 37 named streams. Wisconsin designates 215 of those miles as trout water, on 21 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 07060001 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,747 mi
of mapped stream
3,357 NHD reaches
1,424 sq mi
drainage area
911,496 acres
873 ac
public land
0.1% 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 16% of this basin's stream miles (283.1 of 1,747); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

283.1 of the 283.1 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 16% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

Coon-Yellow is the heart of the Wisconsin driftless: 1,424 square miles of Vernon, Crawford, La Crosse and Monroe counties, 215 designated miles on 21 of its 37 named streams, 221 miles classified cold, and 1,147 acres of public ground in the whole basin — the smallest public total on this site's Wisconsin list, and a plain statement that this fishing happens on private land under WDNR's easement programme. Coon Creek runs 39.6 miles carrying all three classes, the North Fork Bad Axe 31.7 miles at Class II, Mormon Creek 18.0 at Class I and II, the Springville Branch of the Bad Axe 16.9 miles as Class I and Hornby Creek 16.0 at Class I and III. No gauge in the basin holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 37 of them, longest first. 18 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
Mississippi River 51.6 untyped — —
Coon Creek 39.6 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
North Fork Bad Axe River 31.7 Cold — Class II
Mormon Creek 18.0 Cold — Class I, Class II
Springville Branch Bad Axe River 16.9 Cold — Class I
Hornby Creek 16.0 Cold — Class I, Class III
South Fork Bad Axe River 16.0 untyped — Class III
Rush Creek 15.7 Cold — Class II, Class III
Timber Coulee Creek 12.4 Cold — Class I
Sugar Creek 11.8 Cold — Class I
Cota Creek 8.2 untyped — —
Du Charme Creek 7.2 Cold — Class I
Picatee Creek 6.9 Cold — Class I
Rullands Coulee Creek 5.8 Cold — Class I
Cox Creek 5.8 Cold — Class I
North Branch Copper Creek 5.8 Cold — Class I
Buck Creek 5.6 Cold — Class I
Oil Spring Creek 5.4 untyped — —
South Branch Copper Creek 5.3 Cold — Class I
Leitner Creek 5.1 Cold — Class I
Hasley Creek 4.2 untyped — Class III
Copper Creek 4.1 Cold — Class I
Upper Copper Creek 4.1 Cold — Class I
Pammel Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Harpers Slough 3.4 untyped — —
South Fork Sugar Creek 3.1 Cold — Class II
Springs Branch Creek 2.3 untyped — —
Wildcat Creek 2.0 untyped — —
Bull Run 1.6 untyped — —
German Coulee 1.4 untyped — —
Pickerel Slough 0.9 untyped — —
Yellow River 0.5 untyped — —
Paint Creek 0.4 untyped — —
Bad Axe River 0.3 untyped — —
Village Creek 0.2 untyped — —
Wexford Creek 0.1 untyped — —
Bloody Run 0.1 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

873 acres in 6 units, which is 0.1% of the 911,496 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 873 100% 1
Wisconsin DNR 0 0% 4
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 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.