Black River
A river in Wisconsin
About Black River
The Black River takes its name honestly — it runs tannin-stained out of the marsh and pine country of Jackson County, a hundred miles down through Black River Falls and Melrose and North Bend to the Mississippi below La Crosse. The survey gives it 3,380 acres of surface and 380 miles of bank.
Access is canoe-scale. Of the twelve public landings on record, most are named as canoe landings or launches — Brickyard Road, Halls Creek, Lytle's Landing — and none are marked accessible. This is a river to float rather than to run a boat up.
The state classifies 22 miles of it as Class II and Class III trout water, and manages the rest for musky with natural reproduction plus stocking, for lake sturgeon as naturally reproducing, and for smallmouth across the full range of habitat types. Part of the river is also on the state's impaired waters list, which is a water quality listing rather than a comment on the fishing, but it is on the record and worth knowing.
Trout regulations and warmwater regulations both apply on different reaches of this river. Check the current DNR rules for the stretch in question.
Written from Wisconsin DNR hydrography and fisheries data. State water ID WBIC 1676700.
How the state manages it
- musky · Natural reproduction plus stocking (Cat. 2)
- smallmouth · Non-Wadable Coarse Substrate; Non-Wadable Fine Substrate; Wadable Cool Water; Wadable Nursery Waters; Wadable Warm Water
- sturgeon · Naturally Reproducing - ANSRI
- trout · CLASS II; CLASS III
Wisconsin DNR fisheries designations. These describe how the water is managed, not what is in it on any given day.
Fishing license
Wisconsin sells them online. Buy one from the state. We don’t know whether you need one — that depends on your age, where you live, the water, and what your guide’s own license covers.