BirdTrout

Rush-Vermillion Watershed, Wisconsin

1,181 miles of mapped stream across 1,112 square miles of drainage in Pierce, St. Croix, Pepin counties, in 26 named streams. Wisconsin designates 135 of those miles as trout water, on 12 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 07040001 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,181 mi
of mapped stream
2,284 NHD reaches
1,112 sq mi
drainage area
711,814 acres
2,006 ac
public land
0.3% of the basin · 3 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 13% of this basin's stream miles (150.1 of 1,181); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

150.1 of the 150.1 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 13% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

This is driftless coulee country on the Mississippi in Pierce, St. Croix and Pepin counties, and it has almost no public ground at all: 2,483 acres across 1,112 square miles, the least of any Wisconsin basin on this site, spread over four small wildlife areas. What it has instead is spring creeks on private land with designated public access: the Rush River runs 54.1 miles at Class I and II, the Trimbelle 30.6 at Class II, Lost Creek 23.2 miles as Class I, and Isabelle Creek and the Big River 20.3 and 12.9 miles at Class I and II. WDNR designates 135 of the basin's 281 mapped miles on 12 of its 26 named streams, all of it filed wild or wild-supplemented with no stocked water at all, and classifies 206 miles cold.

Every named stream in the basin

All 26 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
Rush River 54.1 Cold — Class I, Class II
Mississippi River 39.7 untyped — —
Trimbelle River 30.6 Cold — Class II
Lost Creek 23.2 Cold — Class I
Isabelle Creek 20.3 Cold — Class I, Class II
Big River 12.9 Cold — Class I, Class II
Little Trimbelle Creek 12.6 Cold — Class I
Cave Creek 12.6 Cold — Class I
Bogus Creek 10.2 Cold — Class II
Pine Creek 9.2 Cold — Class I, Class II
Wind River 9.0 untyped — —
Goose Creek 8.2 Cold — Class II
Gilbert Creek 6.6 untyped — —
Brush Creek 6.5 Cold — Class I
Spring Creek 5.9 Cold — Class II
Swinger Slough 3.4 untyped — —
Catharine Pass 3.3 untyped — —
Miller Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Foley Branch 2.6 untyped — —
Little Pine Creek 2.2 untyped — —
West Lost Creek 1.4 untyped — —
Wells Creek 1.2 untyped — —
Miley Run 0.7 untyped — —
North Branch Pine Creek 0.7 untyped — —
Jackson Run 0.6 untyped — —
Saint Croix River 0.1 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

2,006 acres in 3 units, which is 0.3% of the 711,814 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 2,006 100% 3

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.