BirdTrout

Eau Claire River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,223 miles of mapped stream across 884 square miles of drainage in Eau Claire, Clark, Chippewa, Taylor, Jackson counties, in 44 named streams. Wisconsin designates 209 of those miles as trout water, on 31 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 07050006 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,223 mi
of mapped stream
2,475 NHD reaches
884 sq mi
drainage area
565,630 acres
117,010 ac
public land
20.7% of the basin · 3 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 17% of this basin's stream miles (206.5 of 1,223); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

206.5 of the 206.5 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 17% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Eau Claire drains 884 square miles of Eau Claire, Clark, Chippewa and Taylor counties, and its public ground is entirely county forest: 63,771 acres of Clark County Forest and 51,111 of Eau Claire County Forest out of 117,010 acres in all, with no national or state forest in the basin at all. The Eau Claire River runs 46.5 miles as Class I; Hay Creek runs 43.8 miles at Class I and II, Otter Creek 35.2 and Bridge Creek 21.6 at Class II, Muskrat Creek 18.9 at Class II and Black Creek 22.9 at Class III. WDNR designates 209 of the basin's 456 mapped stream miles on 31 of its 44 named streams and classifies 326 miles cold. No gauge here holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 44 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
Eau Claire River 46.5 Cold — Class I
Hay Creek 43.8 Cold — Class I, Class II
Otter Creek 35.2 Cold — Class II
Black Creek 22.9 untyped — Class III
Bridge Creek 21.6 Cold — Class II
Muskrat Creek 18.9 Cold — Class II
Bears Grass Creek 17.6 Cold — Class II
North Fork Eau Claire River 17.4 untyped — —
Ninemile Creek 15.9 Cold — Class II
Thompson Valley Creek 14.3 Cold — Class II, Class III
Wolf River 13.7 untyped — —
Beaver Creek 11.9 Cold — Class I
Fall Creek 10.7 Cold — Class II
South Fork Eau Claire River 10.6 untyped — —
Schoolhouse Creek 9.1 Cold — Class I
Roger Creek 9.0 untyped — —
Cameron Creek 7.6 untyped — —
Browns Creek 7.2 untyped — —
Diamond Valley Creek 7.1 Cold — Class II
Pea Creek 6.9 untyped — —
Coon Fork Creek 6.9 untyped — —
Sterling Creek 6.6 untyped — Class III
Swim Creek 6.3 Cold — Class I, Class II
Fivemile Creek 6.0 untyped — —
Scott Creek 5.9 Cold — Class II
Sevenmile Creek 5.9 Cold — Class I
Travis Creek 5.6 Cold — Class II
Rush Creek 5.4 Cold — Class II
Thompson Creek 5.1 untyped — —
First Trestle Creek 4.7 untyped — —
Sand Creek 4.7 Cold — Class II
Sixmile Creek 4.5 Cold — Class II
Hathaway Creek 4.4 Cold — Class II
Dickinson Creek 4.2 Cold — Class II
Pine Creek 4.1 Cold — Class I
Whippoorwill Creek 3.9 Cold — Class II
Beeman Creek 3.5 Cold — Class II
Loper Creek 3.3 Cold — Class II
Deinhammer Creek 3.3 Cold — Class I
McGaver Creek 3.2 untyped — —
Coon Gut Creek 3.2 Cold — Class II
Windy Run 2.9 untyped — —
Darrow Creek 2.6 Cold — Class I
Shambaugh Creek 2.3 Cold — Class II

Public land in the watershed

117,010 acres in 3 units, which is 20.7% of the 565,630 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 114,882 98% 2
Wisconsin DNR 2,128 2% 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.