BirdTrout

Oconto River Watershed, Wisconsin

897 miles of mapped stream across 961 square miles of drainage in Oconto, Forest, Menominee, Langlade, Marinette, Shawano counties, in 38 named streams. Wisconsin designates 364 of those miles as trout water, on 34 streams. The 1 mainstem gauge with a July record read 74.7°F in July.

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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 04030104 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

897 mi
of mapped stream
1,787 NHD reaches
961 sq mi
drainage area
614,973 acres
74.7°F
July water temperature at the gauges
1 mainstem gauge, mean 74.7°F
269,130 ac
public land
43.8% of the basin · 8 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 39% of this basin's stream miles (354.0 of 897); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

354.0 of the 354.0 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 39% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Oconto carries one of the highest designated shares in Wisconsin: 364 of its 897 mapped stream miles are trout water, on 34 of only 38 named streams, and 354 miles are classified cold. It is a basin of branches — the North Branch runs 70.1 miles carrying all three classes, the South Branch 56.5 at Class I and II, the Second South Branch 25.6, and the mainstem 41.8 at Class II and III. Kelly Brook's 29.2 miles and McCaslin Brook's 26.3 are Class I water. Public ground is 269,130 acres across 961 square miles of Oconto, Forest, Menominee and Langlade counties, dominated by 218,327 acres of Nicolet National Forest with 37,341 of Oconto County Forest behind it. No gauge here holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 38 of them, longest first. 30 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
North Branch Oconto River 70.1 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
South Branch Oconto River 56.5 Cold — Class I, Class II
Oconto River 41.8 Cold — Class II, Class III
Kelly Brook 29.2 Cold — Class I
McCaslin Brook 26.3 Cold — Class I, Class II
Second South Branch Oconto River 25.6 Cold — Class I, Class II
First South Branch Oconto River 23.6 Cold — Class I, Class II
Pecore Creek 18.6 Cold — Class I, Class III
Waupee Creek 14.7 Cold — Class I, Class III
Daly Creek 10.1 untyped — —
Linzy Creek 9.6 untyped — Class III
Torpee Creek 8.5 Cold — Class II
Hayes Creek 7.8 untyped — Class III
Hills Pond Creek 6.4 Cold — Class I
Weso Creek 6.2 Cold — Class I
Coopman Creek 5.9 Cold — Class I
Hines Creek 5.8 Cold — Class I
Little Waupee Creek 5.8 Cold — Class I
Range Line Creek 5.7 Cold — Class II
Knowles Creek 5.7 Cold — Class I
Mary Creek 5.5 Cold — Class I
Splinter Creek 5.3 Cold — Class I
Indian Creek 4.9 Cold — Class I
Macauley Creek 4.6 Cold — Class I
Snow Falls Creek 4.4 Cold — Class I
Shawano Creek 4.1 Cold — Class II
Dalton Creek 3.9 Cold — Class I
Round Creek 3.2 Cold — Class I
Battle Creek 3.2 Cold — Class I
Baldwin Creek 3.2 Cold — Class I
Brehmer Creek 3.0 Cold — Class I
Rose Lake Creek 2.9 untyped — —
Peshtigo Brook 2.9 untyped — —
Bonita Creek 2.4 Cold — Class I
Founder Creek 2.3 Cold — Class I
Richardson Creek 2.2 Cold — Class II
Town Creek 2.1 Cold — Class I
Sasacat Creek 1.5 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

269,130 acres in 8 units, which is 43.8% of the 614,973 acres the basin covers. Private inholdings carried in the same source file are excluded, here and on the map.

Managing agency Acres Share Units
US Forest Service 218,327 81% 1
County forest 48,189 18% 2
Wisconsin DNR 2,614 1% 5

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.