BirdTrout

Trempealeau River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,423 miles of mapped stream across 729 square miles of drainage in Trempealeau, Jackson, Buffalo counties, in 40 named streams. Wisconsin designates 252 of those miles as trout water, on 31 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 07040005 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,423 mi
of mapped stream
2,868 NHD reaches
729 sq mi
drainage area
466,758 acres
3,309 ac
public land
0.7% of the basin · 7 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 (204.0 of 1,423); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

204.0 of the 204.0 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 14% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Trempealeau drains 729 square miles of coulee country, and its trout water is concentrated in the coulees: 252 of its 1,423 mapped stream miles are trout water, on 31 of 40 named streams, and 204 miles are classified cold. The Trempealeau River runs 59.5 miles at Class II and III; Pigeon Creek 23.4 and Turton Creek 12.7 are Class II, Tamarack Creek's 22.8 miles Class III, Elk Creek 21.7 miles Class II and III, and French Creek 12.5 miles Class I. Public ground is 3,309 acres in four small wildlife areas — Borst Valley at 1,296 acres, Lakes Coulee at 799, Chimney Rock at 627 and Tamarack Creek at 587 — which is the driftless pattern: the fishing is on easements and stream banks rather than blocks of forest. No gauge here holds a July record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 40 of them, longest first. 24 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
Trempealeau River 59.5 Cold — Class II, Class III
Pigeon Creek 23.4 Cold — Class II
Tamarack Creek 22.8 untyped — Class III
Elk Creek 21.7 untyped — Class II, Class III
Turton Creek 12.7 Cold — Class II
French Creek 12.5 Cold — Class I
North Branch Trempealeau River 12.2 Cold — Class I
South Branch Trempealeau River 8.9 Cold — Class II
Borst Valley Creek 8.9 Cold — Class II
Chimney Rock Creek 8.8 Cold — Class II
Traverse Valley Creek 8.8 Cold — Class II
North Creek 7.8 Cold — Class II
Trump Coulee Creek 7.7 Cold — Class II
Pine Creek 7.3 Cold — Class I
Fly Creek 7.2 Cold — Class II
North Branch Elk Creek 7.0 untyped — Class III
Tank Creek 6.7 Cold — Class I
Bruce Valley Creek 6.5 Cold — Class II
Lakes Coulee Creek 6.4 untyped — Class III
Vosse Coulee Creek 6.3 Cold — Class I
Big Slough 5.9 untyped — Class III
Skutley Creek 5.8 Cold — Class I, Class II
Trout Run Creek 5.8 Cold — Class II
Judkins Creek 5.5 untyped — Class III
Schermerhorn Creek 5.4 untyped — Class III
Stony Creek 5.4 Cold — Class I
Reynolds Coulee Creek 5.3 untyped — —
Tappen Coulee Creek 5.1 untyped — Class III
Holcomb Coulee Creek 5.1 Cold — Class II
Beaver Creek 4.7 untyped — —
Timber Creek 4.2 untyped — —
Lowe Creek 4.2 Cold — Class II, Class III
Hawkinson Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Sport Valley Creek 3.4 untyped — Class III
Amo Creek 3.1 Cold — Class II
Sands Creek 3.0 untyped — —
Holmes Creek 2.6 untyped — —
Lyons Creek 2.1 untyped — —
Keller Creek 2.1 untyped — —
Gomsrud Creek 1.9 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

3,309 acres in 7 units, which is 0.7% of the 466,758 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 3,309 100% 7

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.