BirdTrout

Upper Chippewa River Watershed, Wisconsin

1,249 miles of mapped stream across 1,930 square miles of drainage in Sawyer, Rusk, Ashland, Chippewa, Iron, Bayfield counties, in 90 named streams. Wisconsin designates 335 of those miles as trout water, on 51 streams.

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 07050001 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

1,249 mi
of mapped stream
2,217 NHD reaches
1,930 sq mi
drainage area
1,235,286 acres
446,562 ac
public land
36.2% of the basin · 17 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 21% of this basin's stream miles (257.0 of 1,249); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

257.0 of the 257.0 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 21% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

The Upper Chippewa drains 1,930 square miles of Sawyer, Rusk, Ashland and Chippewa counties, and it holds the largest single block of public ground on this state's list: 446,701 acres, of which 267,068 are Chequamegon National Forest, with 67,149 acres of Sawyer County Forest and 48,582 of Rusk County Forest behind it. WDNR designates 335 of the basin's 730 mapped stream miles on 51 of its 90 named streams, and classifies 387 miles cold. The East Fork Chippewa runs 66.5 miles at Class II and III, the Brunet River 42.0 at Class I and II, and Devils Creek 27.4 miles carrying all three classes; the Chippewa's own 37.7 miles and the Thornapple's 37.3 are undesignated. No gauge in the basin holds a July temperature record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 90 of them, longest first. 38 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
East Fork Chippewa River 66.5 Cold — Class II, Class III
Brunet River 42.0 Cold — Class I, Class II
Chippewa River 37.7 untyped — —
Thornapple River 37.3 untyped — —
Hay Creek 27.5 Cold — Class II
Devils Creek 27.4 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
Soft Maple Creek 23.7 untyped — Class III
Big Weirgor Creek 21.3 untyped — Class III
Magee Creek 17.6 untyped — Class III
Dryden Creek 16.5 Cold — Class II
Little Weirgor Creek 16.0 Cold — Class I, Class II
Tupper Creek 14.9 untyped — —
Couderay River 14.1 untyped — —
Alder Creek 12.2 Cold — Class I
Deer Creek 11.4 Cold — Class I, Class II, Class III
East Torch River 11.3 untyped — Class III
Little Thornapple River 11.1 untyped — —
Dingdong Creek 10.8 untyped — Class III
Augustine Creek 10.8 Cold — Class I, Class II
Venison Creek 10.2 untyped — Class III
Maple Creek 10.2 Cold — Class I
Swan Creek 9.3 Cold — Class I
North Branch Tupper Creek 9.0 Cold — Class II
Becky Creek 8.9 Cold — Class I
Swift Creek 8.6 Cold — Class I, Class II
Little Soft Maple Creek 8.2 Cold — Class II
Clear Creek 8.1 Cold — Class I
Dorns Creek 7.6 Cold — Class II, Class III
Pipestone Creek 7.6 Cold — Class I
King Creek 7.1 untyped — —
West Fork Chippewa River 7.0 untyped — —
West Torch River 6.9 untyped — Class III
Spring Creek 6.8 Cold — Class I
Torch River 6.6 untyped — —
Crazy Horse Creek 6.2 untyped — —
Weasel Creek 6.0 untyped — Class III
Elm Creek 5.9 untyped — —
Crawford Creek 5.7 untyped — —
Badger Creek 5.4 Cold — Class I
Willerth Creek 5.3 Cold — Class II
Surette Creek 5.3 untyped — —
Rocky Run 5.2 untyped — Class III
Muskellunge Creek 5.1 untyped — —
Deadman Creek 4.9 Cold — Class I
Casey Creek 4.8 Cold — Class I
Silver Creek 4.6 Cold — Class II
Eddy Creek 4.5 Cold — Class I
Drake Creek 4.4 untyped — —
Crooked Rapids Creek 4.4 Cold — Class II
Summit Creek 4.0 untyped — —
Barber Creek 3.8 Cold — Class II
Skunk Creek 3.7 untyped — —
Hildebrandt Creek 3.6 untyped — Class III
Cranberry Narrows 3.6 untyped — —
Stony Creek 3.6 untyped — —
Meyers Creek 3.5 untyped — Class III
Blueberry Creek 3.5 Cold — Class I
Moss Creek 3.5 Cold — Class I
Knapp Stout Creek 3.5 Cold — Class I
Hemlock Spur Creek 3.5 Cold — Class I
Flyblow Creek 3.5 untyped — —
Island Creek 3.5 untyped — —
Spooky Bay Creek 3.4 Cold — Class I
Hay Creek Narrows 3.3 untyped — —
Hauer Creek 3.3 Cold — Class I
Spider Creek 2.8 untyped — —
Grindstone Creek 2.8 Cold — Class I
Cranberry Creek 2.7 untyped — —
Camp Fifteen Creek 2.6 Cold — Class II
Dead Creek 2.5 Cold — Class II
Phelan Creek 2.4 untyped — —
Johns Creek 2.3 untyped — —
Camp Fourteen Creek 2.2 untyped — —
Spring Brook 2.2 untyped — —
Buff Creek 2.2 untyped — —
Camp One Creek 2.1 untyped — —
Kelp Creek 2.0 untyped — —
Beaver Creek 1.8 Cold — Class I
Bear Creek 1.7 Cold — Class II
Chapple Creek 1.7 untyped — —
Hinder Creek 1.6 untyped — —
North Fork Chief River 1.6 untyped — —
Reins Creek 1.3 Cold — Class II
Flunkers Creek 1.2 Cold — Class I
Osprey Creek 0.9 untyped — —
Yankee Joe Creek 0.6 untyped — —
Kenyon Creek 0.6 untyped — —
Schraum Creek 0.4 untyped — —
Twin Creek 0.4 untyped — —
Hungry Run 0.3 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

446,562 acres in 17 units, which is 36.2% of the 1,235,286 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 267,068 60% 1
County forest 173,007 39% 7
Wisconsin DNR 6,487 1% 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 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.