BirdTrout

Flambeau River Watershed, Wisconsin

756 miles of mapped stream across 1,179 square miles of drainage in Vilas, Iron, Price, Rusk, Sawyer, Ashland counties, in 59 named streams. Wisconsin designates 208 of those miles as trout water, on 37 streams. The 4 mainstem gauges with a July record read between 68.8 and 73.0°F in July.

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 07050002 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

756 mi
of mapped stream
1,566 NHD reaches
1,179 sq mi
drainage area
754,828 acres
68.8–73.0°F
July water temperature at the gauges
4 mainstem gauges, mean 70.5°F
316,231 ac
public land
41.9% 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 24% of this basin's stream miles (182.2 of 756); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

182.2 of the 182.2 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 24% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Flambeau River runs 105.1 miles through this basin designated Class I — the longest Class I water in Wisconsin on this site by a wide margin. Behind it Butternut Creek runs 36.0 miles at Class II and III, Swamp Creek 22.4 the same, Pine Creek 19.1 miles carrying all three classes and Deer Creek 14.4 at Class I and II; the Turtle River's 30.3 miles are undesignated. WDNR designates 208 of the basin's 493 mapped stream miles on 37 of its 59 named streams and classifies 355 miles cold. Public ground is 317,008 acres across 1,179 square miles of Vilas, Iron, Price and Rusk counties, led by 149,732 acres of the Northern Highland State Forest and 68,309 of the Flambeau River State Forest. No gauge here holds a July record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 59 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
Flambeau River 105.1 Cold — Class I
Butternut Creek 36.0 Cold — Class II, Class III
Turtle River 30.3 untyped — —
Swamp Creek 22.4 Cold — Class II, Class III
Pine Creek 19.1 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
Deer Creek 14.4 Cold — Class I, Class II
Rice Creek 14.3 Cold — Class II
Log Creek 14.2 Cold — Class II, Class III
Manitowish River 12.2 untyped — —
Smith Creek 9.6 Cold — Class II
Weber Creek 9.5 Cold — Class II
George Ladd Creek 9.1 untyped — —
Beaver Creek 8.4 Cold — Class II
Spiller Creek 7.9 untyped — Class III
Crooked Creek 7.9 untyped — —
Papoose Creek 7.5 Cold — Class II, Class III
Rainbow Creek 7.5 untyped — —
Connors Creek 6.8 Cold — Class I
Hurd Creek 6.7 Cold — Class II
Hay Creek 6.6 Cold — Class II
Josie Creek 6.4 Cold — Class II
Siphon Creek 5.7 Cold — Class II
Pinkerton Creek 5.3 Cold — Class II
Hoffman Creek 5.2 untyped — —
Wildcat Creek 5.1 untyped — —
North Creek 5.0 Cold — Class I
Allequash Creek 5.0 Cold — Class I, Class II
Long Creek 5.0 untyped — —
Garland Creek 4.9 Cold — Class II
Mann Creek 4.9 untyped — —
Dollar Creek 4.8 untyped — Class III
Bosner Creek 4.8 Cold — Class I, Class II
Rock Creek 4.6 Cold — Class II
No Mans Creek 4.4 untyped — —
Pardee Creek 4.1 Cold — Class I
Partridge Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Johnson Creek 3.9 Cold — Class I
Bear Creek 3.9 Cold — Class I
Flood Creek 3.7 Cold — Class II
Nixon Creek 3.6 untyped — —
Grassy Creek 3.4 untyped — —
White Sand Creek 3.2 untyped — —
Le Tourneau Creek 3.2 untyped — —
Trout River 3.1 untyped — —
McGinnis Creek 3.0 Cold — Class I
Stevenson Creek 3.0 Cold — Class II
Ninemile Creek 3.0 Cold — Class II, Class III
Little Connors Creek 2.7 untyped — Class III
Salsich Creek 2.6 Cold — Class I
Camp Seven Creek 2.6 Cold — Class II
Betsy Creek 2.5 untyped — —
Sixmile Creek 2.4 Cold — Class I
Mason Creek 2.2 untyped — Class III
Gardner Creek 1.9 untyped — —
Drinkwine Creek 1.8 untyped — Class III
Pixley Creek 1.4 untyped — —
Moose Creek 0.5 untyped — —
South Fork Flambeau River 0.5 untyped — —
Long Lake Creek 0.0 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

316,231 acres in 14 units, which is 41.9% of the 754,828 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 231,032 73% 7
County forest 74,253 23% 6
US Forest Service 10,946 3% 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.