BirdTrout

Lower St. Croix River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,356 miles of mapped stream across 2,617 square miles of drainage in Polk, St. Croix, Burnett, Pierce, Barron counties, in 59 named streams. Wisconsin designates 196 of those miles as trout water, on 32 streams. The 2 mainstem gauges with a July record read between 71.1 and 77.3°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 07030005 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,356 mi
of mapped stream
3,056 NHD reaches
2,617 sq mi
drainage area
1,674,756 acres
71.1–77.3°F
July water temperature at the gauges
2 mainstem gauges, mean 74.2°F
88,043 ac
public land
5.3% of the basin · 30 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 14% of this basin's stream miles (190.9 of 1,356); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

190.9 of the 190.9 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 14% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Lower St. Croix is a driftless-edge and glacial-plain mix across 2,617 square miles of Polk, St. Croix, Burnett and Pierce counties: 196 designated miles on 32 of 59 named streams, out of 612 mapped miles, with 403 classified cold. The Apple River runs 86.0 miles at Class II and the Willow 63.9 at Class II and III; the Trade River's 53.4 miles carry all three classes, and the Kinnickinnic — the spring creek this corner of the state is known for — runs 41.9 miles as Class I. The St. Croix's own 50.9 miles here are undesignated. Public ground is 88,394 acres and it is wetland and county forest: Crex Meadows Wildlife Area at 20,830 acres, Burnett County Forest at 16,275, Fish Lake at 13,791. No gauge here holds a July record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 59 of them, longest first. 26 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
Apple River 86.0 Cold — Class II
Willow River 63.9 Cold — Class II, Class III
Trade River 53.4 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
Saint Croix River 50.9 untyped — —
Kinnickinnic River 41.9 Cold — Class I
Wood River 23.3 untyped — —
Wolf Creek 20.3 Cold — Class I, Class II
North Fork Trade River 17.6 untyped — Class I
Straight River 15.5 Cold — Class II
Butternut Creek 15.2 untyped — —
South Fork Willow River 15.1 Cold — Class II
Hutton Creek 13.8 Cold — Class II
Logging Creek 12.6 untyped — —
Tenmile Creek 11.4 Cold — Class II, Class III
Bull Brook 10.9 untyped — Class III
Balsam Branch 9.4 untyped — —
Black Brook 9.4 Cold — Class II
Parker Creek 9.2 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
Horse Creek 8.9 untyped — —
South Fork Kinnickinnic River 8.9 Cold — Class I
Paperjack Creek 7.8 untyped — —
Cowan Creek 6.5 Cold — Class II
Rock Creek 6.3 untyped — —
Osceola Creek 6.3 Cold — Class II, Class III
South Branch Kinnickinnic River 6.2 untyped — —
Dry Creek 6.1 untyped — —
Hay Creek 6.0 Cold — Class II
Wapogasset Branch 5.7 untyped — —
Rice Bed Creek 4.9 Cold — Class II
Big Rock Creek 4.7 Cold — Class I
Sunrise River 4.0 untyped — —
Rush Creek 3.6 untyped — —
Jack Green Creek 3.6 untyped — —
Peabody Creek 3.4 Cold — Class I
Nye Creek 3.3 Cold — Class I
Toby Creek 3.1 Cold — Class I
Snake Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Friday Creek 2.8 Cold — Class II
Ted Creek 2.7 Cold — Class II
Wood Creek 2.5 untyped — —
Stevens Creek 2.5 untyped — —
South Branch Trade River 2.5 Cold — Class I
French Creek 2.4 untyped — —
Phantom Lake Bypass 2.1 untyped — —
Behning Creek 2.1 Cold — Class I
Lagoo Creek 2.0 Cold — Class II
Kelly Creek 1.6 Cold — Class II
Burns Creek 1.4 Cold — Class I
Close Slough 1.0 untyped — —
Lawrence Creek 0.8 untyped — —
Refuge Bypass 0.7 untyped — —
Cold Creek 0.7 Cold — Class II
Goose Creek 0.6 untyped — —
Markee Creek 0.6 Cold — Class I
Dry Run 0.5 untyped — —
Beaver Brook 0.3 untyped — —
Fox Creek 0.2 untyped — —
Snake River 0.1 untyped — —
Cedar Creek 0.0 Cold — Class II

Public land in the watershed

88,043 acres in 30 units, which is 5.3% of the 1,674,756 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 61,324 70% 26
County forest 26,719 30% 2
US Fish and Wildlife Service 0 0% 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.