Major Update for Wisconsin Maps

At TroutRoutes, we aim to have the most comprehensive and accurate mapping system for Trout Anglers available. After several weeks of hard work, we’re excited to announce we’ve completed a significant overhaul of our Wisconsin trout stream maps with key updates. The three key areas are:

• New Trout Streams: Added over 1,100 new trout streams to our maps for Wisconsin
• New Easements: Added 90 miles of new fishing easements from local counties and other sources
• Expanded and corrected classifications of public land: All new public land classifications. We completely redid our public lands from the ground up, resulting in new boundaries and correcting classifications of public land that had previously been identified as easements

New Trout Streams

“…We’re happy to announce all streams that are formally designated as Trout Streams in Wisconsin are now in our maps. This means we’ve added 1,100 new trout streams into our system.”

When we first added Wisconsin to our maps in 2019, we spent a significant amount of time “filtering” out the noise by removing some trout streams from the Wisconsin database that represented little opportunity to trout anglers. The intent was to help our audience focus on the streams that most commonly represent opportunity; larger creeks and rivers with consistent flow and public access. In retrospect, we probably either shouldn’t have done this filtering or pulled way back.

In any case, we’re happy to announce all streams that are formally designated as Trout Streams in Wisconsin are now in our maps. This means we’ve added 1,100 new trout streams into our system. To give you an example of this difference, the image to the left shows the previous streams we had (blue) and the new ones that were added (pink).

New Easements

“…This means we’ve added 90 miles of new fishing easements to our maps, primarily in the key Driftless counties such as Vernon and Monroe counties.”

Fishing easements in Wisconsin are arguably the most valuable asset to the trout anglers in the state. These are key access corridors that have been made available by the local private land owner specifically for fishing access.

In our first version of Wisconsin, we tried to find every piece of public land we could find. In addition to the basic layers from Wisconsin DNR like state parks and forests, we found local county parks, city parks, and other easy-to-miss access points that can prove to be valuable new access opportunities for the trout angler.

Specifically, we’ve updated all of our easements from the Wisconsin DNR as well as worked with local counties like Vernon County, Buffalo and Monroe County that have county fishing easements that aren’t well publicized. This means we’ve added 90 miles of new fishing easements to our maps, primarily in the key Driftless counties such as Vernon and Monroe counties.

Corrections to past easements

In the case of easements, we had incorrectly classified some public land as designated fishing easements that are actually just general public land from the state of Wisconsin. In a few rare examples, we had incorrectly identified a few conservation easements as public that were actually protected for natural preservation but not made available public for fishing access. In these two cases, we’ve simply removed them from our maps and they are now shown as private stretches. The image below shows a before and after of the new public land classifications for a popular river near the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) of Minnesota.