BirdTrout

Pecatonica River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,868 miles of mapped stream across 1,880 square miles of drainage in Lafayette, Iowa, Green, Dane, Rock counties, in 61 named streams. Wisconsin designates 276 of those miles as trout water, on 41 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 07090003 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,868 mi
of mapped stream
3,385 NHD reaches
1,880 sq mi
drainage area
1,203,296 acres
4,395 ac
public land
0.4% of the basin · 2 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 16% of this basin's stream miles (305.9 of 1,868); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

305.9 of the 305.9 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 16% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Pecatonica drains 1,880 square miles of Lafayette, Iowa, Green and Dane counties in the southern driftless, and every designated mile in it is filed by WDNR as wild or wild-supplemented — no stocked water at all. There are 276 designated miles on 41 of the basin's 61 named streams, out of 556 mapped, with 432 classified cold. The Pecatonica runs 60.7 miles and its East Branch 57.9, both Class II; Gordon Creek runs 24.0 miles at Class I and II, Dodge Branch 23.8 and Sudan Branch 18.1 at Class II. Public ground is 4,395 acres and almost all of it is the 4,395-acre Yellowstone Wildlife Area. No USGS gauge in the basin holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 61 of them, longest first. 35 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
Pecatonica River 60.7 Cold — Class II
East Branch Pecatonica River 57.9 Cold — Class II
Gordon Creek 24.0 Cold — Class I, Class II
Dodge Branch 23.8 Cold — Class II
Otter Creek 20.7 untyped — —
Sudan Branch 18.1 Cold — Class II
Spafford Creek 16.9 untyped — —
Dougherty Creek 16.7 Cold — Class II
Kittleson Valley Creek 12.5 Cold — Class II
Wolf Creek 10.6 Cold — Class II
Whiteside Creek 10.5 Cold — Class II
Laxey Creek 10.3 Cold — Class I
Mineral Point Branch 10.1 untyped — —
Mud Branch 10.1 Cold — Class II
East Fork Raccoon Creek 9.8 Cold — Class II
Erickson Creek 9.7 Cold — Class II
Copper Creek 9.1 Cold — Class II
Smith Conley Creek 8.9 Cold — Class II
Sawmill Creek 8.9 Cold — Class II
Yellowstone River 8.2 untyped — —
Canon Creek 7.7 Cold — Class II
German Valley Branch 7.6 Cold — Class II
Conley Lewis Creek 7.3 Cold — Class I, Class II
Apple Branch 7.2 Cold — Class II
Turtle Creek 6.9 untyped — —
Brown Branch Spafford Creek 6.8 Cold — Class II
Bushnell Creek 6.8 Cold — Class II
Buckskin School Creek 6.7 untyped — —
Lovett Creek 6.6 Cold — Class II
Brewery Creek 6.2 Cold — Class II
Trout Brook 6.0 Cold — Class II
Pleasant Valley Branch 5.9 Cold — Class II
Olson Creek 5.9 Cold — Class II
Braezels Branch 5.9 untyped — —
Silver Spring Creek 5.9 Cold — Class II
Feather Branch 5.6 untyped — —
Jones Branch 5.2 Cold — Class II
Syftestad Creek 5.2 Cold — Class II
Rock Branch 5.0 Cold — Class II
East Spafford Branch 5.0 untyped — —
Simmons Branch 4.9 untyped — —
Brager Branch 4.7 untyped — —
Steiner Branch 4.7 Cold — Class II
Brennan Creek 4.7 Cold — Class II
Peddler Creek 4.3 untyped — —
Thunder Branch 4.2 untyped — —
Lynch Branch 4.1 Cold — Class II
Williams-Rewey Branch 3.8 Cold — Class II
Blotz Branch 3.7 untyped — —
Ley Creek 3.7 Cold — Class I, Class II
Whitford Creek 3.3 Cold — Class I
Williams-Barneveld Creek 3.3 Cold — Class I
Gribble Branch 3.2 Cold — Class II
Long Valley Creek 3.2 untyped — —
Urnus Creek 3.1 untyped — —
Prairie Brook 3.1 untyped — —
Regan Creek 2.6 Cold — Class II
Raccoon Creek 2.6 untyped — —
Argus School Branch 2.4 untyped — —
McPeace Valley Creek 1.9 untyped — —
Schmidt Creek 1.7 Cold — Class II

Public land in the watershed

4,395 acres in 2 units, which is 0.4% of the 1,203,296 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 4,395 100% 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 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.