BirdTrout

Sugar River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,035 miles of mapped stream across 761 square miles of drainage in Green, Dane, Rock counties, in 31 named streams. Wisconsin designates 167 of those miles as trout water, on 21 streams. The 2 mainstem gauges with a July record read between 66.8 and 67.4°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 07090004 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,035 mi
of mapped stream
1,740 NHD reaches
761 sq mi
drainage area
486,751 acres
66.8–67.4°F
July water temperature at the gauges
2 mainstem gauges, mean 67.1°F
10,182 ac
public land
2.1% of the basin · 9 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 (134.2 of 1,035); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

134.2 of the 134.2 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

The Sugar drains 761 square miles of Green, Dane and Rock counties, and its trout water runs on the upper river and the spring branches: the Sugar River itself for 55.0 miles at Class II, the Little Sugar 32.5 miles and the West Branch 23.8 as Class I, Sylvester Creek 14.7 at Class II and Story Creek 14.0 at Class I. Allen Creek's 29.5 miles are Class III. WDNR designates 167 of the basin's 314 mapped stream miles on 21 of its 31 named streams and classifies 216 miles cold. Public ground is 10,182 acres in wildlife areas along the valley — Avon Bottoms at 4,293 acres, Brooklyn at 2,633, Albany at 1,951 and Evansville at 738. No gauge in the basin holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 31 of them, longest first. 17 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
Sugar River 55.0 Cold — Class II
Little Sugar River 32.5 Cold — Class I
Allen Creek 29.5 Cold — Class III
West Branch Sugar River 23.8 Cold — Class I
Sylvester Creek 14.7 untyped — Class II
Story Creek 14.0 Cold — Class I
Burgy Creek 13.1 Cold — Class II
Hefty Creek 10.5 untyped — Class II
Badger Mill Creek 9.5 Cold — Class II
Liberty Creek 9.1 untyped — —
West Branch Little Sugar River 7.2 untyped — —
Mount Vernon Creek 6.6 Cold — Class I
Primrose Branch 6.3 Cold — Class I
Silver School Branch 6.2 untyped — Class II
Deer Creek 5.8 Cold — Class I
Gill Creek 5.7 untyped — Class II
Dunphy Branch 5.5 untyped — —
Ward Creek 5.4 untyped — Class I
Legler School Branch 5.4 untyped — Class II
Fryes Feeder 5.3 Cold — Class I
Center Branch Hefty Creek 5.2 untyped — Class II
Ross Crossing Creek 5.2 Cold — Class II
Elmer School Branch 5.0 untyped — —
Flynn Creek 4.6 Cold — Class I
Spring Valley Creek 4.6 Cold — Class I
South Branch Hefty Creek 4.1 untyped — —
Hammerly Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Cold Spring Creek 3.8 untyped — —
Oakley Branch 2.6 untyped — —
Milum Creek 2.4 untyped — —
Juda Branch 1.1 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

10,182 acres in 9 units, which is 2.1% of the 486,751 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 10,182 100% 9

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.