Wisconsin's forests, rivers, and wetlands provide diverse opportunities for hunters and anglers. The following resources will help you find areas with particular game and will give you general information on the land.
Fishing Maps and Products
Topo USA: Fly-Fishing Edition
This product is available from DeLorme and was created under a partnership with Trout Unlimited. It includes a set of digital topo maps of the entire U.S. specifically designed for the fly-fishing angler. It includes tools for planning and recording fishing trips as well as printing out customized topographic maps. You can also search for streams by name, location, or choose one of America's 100 best trout streams.
Professor Higbee's Wisconsin Stream Map
Designed as a tool for trout fishing, this map covers the entire state including lakes, streams, and watersheds. However, the map does not differentiate between streams with and without trout populations, and does not identify local roads and public access points. Visit http://www.streammaps.com/ for more information.
Clarkson Maps
The Clarkson Map Company has hunting, fishing, navigational, travel, and business maps. Their lake coverage is particularly extensive, and they sell county maps with trout streams highlighted. Clarkson also sells Wisconsin county maps and USGS quadrangle maps.
Fishing Hot Spots
Fishing Hot Spots has a series of books which detail lakes and rivers by geographic boundaries. The company also has lake contour maps marked with fishing spots for individual lakes or chains of lakes. Fishing Hot Spots provides a catalog of directories, maps, and detailed reports on many Wisconsin streams and lakes.
Wisconsin Lake Maps CD-ROM
A CD-ROM of topographical maps for over 1400 Wisconsin lakes is available from CDMAP-IT. Users can search for a certain lake according to its name, county, fish type, public access type, or acreage size.
Wisconsin Fishing Map Guides and Fishing Map PRO CD-ROM
Sportsman's Connection offers Wisconsin Fishing Map Guides and the Wisconsin FishingMap Pro CD-ROM. The spiral-bound guides include 150-250+ color contour lake maps each, lake survey data, access information and local fishing information. The CD-ROM includes over 1,000 lake maps, and adds search features, detailed road maps, a photo album manager, and integrated web links for current local weather and driving directions. Users can also add their own notes right on the map.
Fishes of Wisconsin by George C. Becker
Orginally published in 1983, Fishes of Wisconsin remains a classic. Though not currently being produced due to rising printing costs, the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute has made the complete text available on-line. This 1,065 page on-line reference covers the basic information about Wisconsin waters and features extensive coverage of all fish in Wisconsin and their habitats.
Lake-Link.com
This website provides a vast amount of information about fishing, hunting, and other recreational activities throughout the Mid-West. Definitely worth the time to visit.
Hunting Maps and Products
Hunter's Guide
There are 10 "Hunter's Guide" atlases that cover 5 or more counties each, with details of 1.5 million acres of forest crop lands, managed forest crop lands, public hunting grounds, county lands, and national forest lands. A list of available hunting land by county and copies of plat books mark designated hunting areas. These atlases are available from the Wis. Hunter's Guide, Inc.
Deer Management Maps
Available deer management maps can be found on the DNR's web site at the following url. www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wildlife/hunt/deer/index.htm
Other Resources
Outdoorsmen/women will find USGS topographic maps useful because they show the shape of the land and important features like wetlands, small streams, and wooded areas. Since these maps come in a variety of scales and are designated according to quadrangles or counties, you need to have a certain area in mind when ordering. Also, since the late 1990s most federal topographic maps have become available in computerized (scanned) form.
The DNR offers an "Activities" page to their website that provides licensing information for hunting and fishing. There is also information for other recreational activities such as hiking, snowmobiling, and boating.
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