Spring Creek Tree Planting 2025 May 10th, 2025
Who: Members from Antigo Trout Unlimited, Green Bay Trout Unlimited, Marinette Trout Unlimited, Oconto River Trout Unlimited, Wisconsin River Valley Trout Unlimited, Wolf River Trout Unlimited, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources led by Taylor Curran and the Antigo Fisheries Crew.
What: Tree planting will be conducted in the 2024 project section of Spring Creek. This section of Spring Creek is just below the culvert crossing on the DNR access road and continues downstream about 1,600 feet. Tag alder has been mowed fifteen feet from each stream bank. We will be planting 1,200 seedlings composed of aspen, highbush cranberry, grey dogwood, red osier dogwood, white pine, sycamore, tamarack and swamp white oak. If time allows, we will also plant and fence 35 park stock trees composed of yellow birch, white cedar, red maple, bur oak, swamp white oak and white pine. WDNR staff will prepare the seedlings and park stock for planting. Please view the following guide for instructions on planting seedlings Two basic methods of hand planting or please view this video to learn more Green Side Up: Hand Planting. Planting specific plans will be provided during the workday.
Where: The project site is located on Spring Lake Fishery Area. The work site is located off Spring Lake Road on the DNR access road to Spring Creek. There is a DNR parking lot directly off Spring Lake Road (this is not the Spring Lake parking area.) For this project, we can drive through the gate closer to the creek. Spring Lake Road runs east and west between County highway K and County highway R/ Heineman Road. GPS coordinates: DNR parking lot 45.25752, -89.60909, creek access 45.25685, -89.61145
What to Bring? Waders or knee boots, gloves, water, bug spray, tree spuds, shovels.
About the stream: Spring Creek supports quality populations of naturally reproducing native brook trout (Salvilinus frontinalis) and naturalized brown trout (Salmo trutta). The Spring Creek system is an important thermal refugee for trout in the Prairie River. In 2024 a large stream restoration project was completed on Spring Creek. The project included channel shaping, large rock and wood installations and tag alder mowing. Goals of the planting will be suppressing tag alder regrowth and recruiting mature trees within the riparian corridor of Spring Creek. In the future, this will provide shade and large wood recruitment to the stream. This project is on a unique property, it contains access to Spring Creek, an Unnamed Tributary to Spring Creek and Spring Lake. We are planning to continue the stream restoration project downstream on Spring Creek in the summer of 2025. We have hopes to someday dredge Spring Lake.
Please contact Taylor Curran with any questions (608)509-5496 or Taylor.Curran@wisconsin.gov
Paul Kruse – Green bay TU – kruser500@gmail.com
Wayne Czypinski – Oconto River Tu – wczypinski@yahoo.com