BirdTrout

Kickapoo River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,890 miles of mapped stream across 768 square miles of drainage in Vernon, Crawford, Monroe, Richland counties, in 50 named streams. Wisconsin designates 354 of those miles as trout water, on 42 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 07070006 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,890 mi
of mapped stream
3,512 NHD reaches
768 sq mi
drainage area
491,333 acres
3,799 ac
public land
0.8% of the basin · 4 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 20% of this basin's stream miles (386.4 of 1,890); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

386.4 of the 386.4 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 20% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Kickapoo River runs 134.7 miles through this basin at Class I and II — the longest designated river on this site's Wisconsin list — through 768 square miles of Vernon, Crawford, Monroe and Richland counties. Behind it the West Fork runs 27.7 miles at Class I and II, Tainter Creek 15.9 the same, Billings Creek 16.7 and Moore Creek 15.0 at Class II, and Otter Creek 15.3 miles as Class I. WDNR designates 354 of the basin's 472 mapped stream miles — 75% of the network — on 42 of its 50 named streams, and classifies 380 miles cold. Public ground is 3,799 acres, essentially all of it the 3,799-acre Kickapoo Wildlife Area, so most access here is by easement rather than block ownership. No gauge holds a July record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 50 of them, longest first. 21 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
Kickapoo River 134.7 Cold — Class I, Class II
West Fork Kickapoo River 27.7 Cold — Class I, Class II
Billings Creek 16.7 Cold — Class II
Tainter Creek 15.9 Cold — Class I, Class II
Otter Creek 15.3 Cold — Class I
Moore Creek 15.0 untyped — Class II
Brush Creek 13.0 untyped — Class I
Cook Creek 11.3 Cold — Class I, Class III
Pine Creek 11.2 Cold — Class I
Camp Creek 9.8 Cold — Class I
Plum Creek 9.7 Cold — Class I
Weister Creek 9.4 Cold — Class I
Citron Creek 9.4 untyped — Class III
Reads Creek 8.9 Cold — Class I
Halls Branch 8.3 Cold — Class II, Class III
Bear Creek 7.9 Cold — Class II, Class III
Seas Branch 7.7 Cold — Class I
Knapp Creek 7.5 untyped — Class III
Sleighton Creek 7.4 untyped — —
Jug Creek 7.4 Cold — Class II
Elk Creek 6.6 Cold — Class I
Bishop Branch 6.5 Cold — Class I
North Bear Creek 6.4 untyped — Class III
South Bear Creek 6.3 Cold — Class II
Warner Creek 6.0 Cold — Class II
Sand Creek 6.0 Cold — Class I
Trout Creek 5.7 Cold — Class I
Warner Branch 5.2 Cold — Class II, Class III
Harrison Creek 5.0 untyped — Class I
Upper Brush Creek 4.9 untyped — Class III
Day Creek 4.7 Cold — Class I
Sherry Creek 4.0 Cold — Class II
Elk Run 3.7 Cold — Class II
Hall Creek 3.6 untyped — Class I
Middle Bear Creek 3.6 Cold — Class II, Class III
Baker Creek 3.6 Cold — Class II
Poe Creek 3.5 untyped — —
Goose Creek 3.4 Cold — Class II
Rocky Run 3.3 Cold — Class I
Duffy Creek 3.3 untyped — Class III
Indian Creek 3.2 Cold — Class II
Posey Creek 2.7 untyped — —
Lower Brush Creek 2.7 untyped — —
Tenny Spring Creek 2.5 Cold — Class I
Birds Creek 2.2 untyped — —
South Jug Creek 2.2 untyped — —
Hoke Creek 2.1 Cold — Class I
Sheridan Creek 2.0 untyped — —
Plum Run 1.9 Cold — Class I
Dickson Branch 0.6 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

3,799 acres in 4 units, which is 0.8% of the 491,333 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 3,799 100% 4

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.