BirdTrout

Upper Fox River Watershed, Wisconsin

859 miles of mapped stream across 1,620 square miles of drainage in Marquette, Green Lake, Winnebago, Waushara, Columbia, Adams, Fond du Lac counties, in 43 named streams. Wisconsin designates 209 of those miles as trout water, on 28 streams. The 2 mainstem gauges with a July record read 78.7°F in July.

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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 04030201 in the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. Every figure below adds up the river pages in this basin — same records, one basin at a time.

859 mi
of mapped stream
1,600 NHD reaches
1,620 sq mi
drainage area
1,036,923 acres
78.7°F
July water temperature at the gauges
2 mainstem gauges, mean 78.7°F
30,796 ac
public land
3.0% of the basin · 15 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 24% of this basin's stream miles (207.4 of 859); the rest is untyped and is drawn grey on the map above.

207.4 of the 207.4 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 24% of it.

What makes this watershed distinctive

This is the Fox on the Green Bay side — the spring-fed sand-country basin of Marquette, Green Lake, Winnebago and Waushara counties, not the Illinois-draining Fox in the southeast. The Mecan River runs 41.7 miles at Class I and II and Neenah Creek 39.3 at Class I and III; the White River's 19.9 miles are Class I, and Lunch Creek and Sucker Creek run 18.5 and 17.7 miles apiece at Class I and II. WDNR designates 209 of the basin's 398 mapped stream miles on 28 of its 43 named streams, and classifies 315 miles cold. Public ground is 30,796 acres across 1,620 square miles, all of it marsh and wildlife area: White River Marsh at 13,338 acres, Grand River Marsh at 7,650 and French Creek at 3,788. No gauge here holds a July record.

Every named stream in the basin

All 43 of them, longest first. 21 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
Mecan River 41.7 Cold — Class I, Class II
Neenah Creek 39.3 Cold — Class I, Class III
White River 19.9 Cold — Class I
Lunch Creek 18.5 Cold — Class I, Class II
Sucker Creek 17.7 Cold — Class I, Class II
Puchyan River 16.7 untyped — —
Chaffee Creek 16.0 Cold — Class I, Class II
Tagatz Creek 15.4 Cold — Class I
Silver Creek 15.2 Cold — Class II
Klawitter Creek 15.0 Cold — Class II
Westfield Creek 14.6 untyped — —
Montello River 14.6 Cold — Class II
O'Keefe Creek 13.4 Cold — Class II
Fox River 11.4 untyped — —
Wedde Creek 10.3 Cold — Class II
Caves Creek 9.4 Cold — Class I
West Branch White River 8.0 Cold — Class I
Roy Creek 7.2 untyped — —
Ox Creek 6.6 Cold — Class II
South Branch Wedde Creek 6.5 Cold — Class I
Dakin Creek 6.5 Cold — Class II
Snake Creek 5.7 Cold — Class I
Little Pine Creek 5.6 Cold — Class I
Bird Creek 4.7 Cold — Class I
Chapman Creek 4.6 untyped — —
Spring Creek 4.5 untyped — —
South Branch Neenah Creek 4.4 untyped — —
Page Creek 4.3 untyped — —
West Branch Little Pine Creek 3.9 Cold — Class I
Allen Creek 3.8 untyped — —
Big Spring Creek 3.7 Cold — Class I
Lawrence Creek 3.7 Cold — Class I
North Branch Wedde Creek 3.7 Cold — Class I
Schmudlack Creek 3.7 Cold — Class I
Hill Creek 3.5 untyped — —
Peppermill Creek 2.7 untyped — —
Bowers Creek 2.6 Cold — Class I
Mad River 2.2 untyped — —
East Branch Little Pine Creek 2.0 Cold — Class I
White Creek 1.7 Cold — Class I
Little Lunch Creek 1.6 untyped — —
Big Slough 0.8 untyped — —
Puchyan Mill Race 0.7 untyped — —

Public land in the watershed

30,796 acres in 15 units, which is 3.0% of the 1,036,923 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 30,796 100% 15

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.