BirdTrout

Jump River Watershed, Wisconsin

347 miles of mapped stream across 854 square miles of drainage in Price, Rusk, Taylor, Chippewa counties, in 21 named streams. Wisconsin designates 52 of those miles as trout water, on 8 streams.

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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 07050004 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

347 mi
of mapped stream
863 NHD reaches
854 sq mi
drainage area
546,851 acres
96,227 ac
public land
17.6% 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 10% of this basin's stream miles (35.8 of 347); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

35.8 of the 35.8 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 10% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Jump is the smallest network on this state's list: 21 named streams among 347 mapped miles, of which 52 are designated on 8 streams, and 36 miles are classified cold. It drains 854 square miles of Price, Rusk, Taylor and Chippewa counties. The South Fork Main Creek runs 32.2 miles at Class I and II, Silver Creek 27.0 at Class I and III, the Mondeaux River 21.6 and Douglas Creek 19.4 at Class II, and the Middle Fork Main Creek 16.6 miles as Class I. Public ground is 96,227 acres and is split almost exactly between two owners — 42,854 acres of Price County Forest and 42,771 of Chequamegon National Forest — with the 2,734-acre Pershing Wildlife Area behind them. No gauge in the basin holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 21 of them, longest first. 7 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
South Fork Main Creek 32.2 Cold — Class I, Class II
Silver Creek 27.0 Cold — Class I, Class III
Mondeaux River 21.6 Cold — Class II
Douglas Creek 19.4 Cold — Class II
Middle Fork Main Creek 16.6 Cold — Class I
Mondeaux Creek 11.3 untyped — —
Bear Creek 8.5 untyped — —
Stony Creek 8.0 untyped — —
Morgan Creek 7.0 untyped — —
Alcohol Creek 6.8 untyped — —
Levitt Creek 6.1 untyped — —
Fisher Creek 4.9 untyped — Class III
Spring Creek 4.8 untyped — —
Camp Eleven Creek 4.2 Cold — Class II
Ottertail Creek 4.0 untyped — Class II
Shady Brook 3.9 untyped — —
Black Brook 3.3 untyped — —
Rocky Run 2.9 untyped — —
Golden Creek 1.8 untyped — —
Schoolhouse Creek 1.7 untyped — —
Shamrock Creek 1.2 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

96,227 acres in 6 units, which is 17.6% of the 546,851 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 49,807 52% 3
US Forest Service 42,771 44% 1
Wisconsin DNR 3,649 4% 2

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.