Highway 8 to County C: the trout river
Cavour, where US 8 crosses the river in Forest County, is the top of the water the trout regulations care about. From there the Peshtigo runs south through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and into Marinette County past Goodman Park and McClintock Park, both county parks with campgrounds on the river, before County C and the head of Caldron Falls Flowage. FlyFishingWisconsin's warning is blunt: what the upper river lacks in size it makes up for in danger, deep and swift at least up by Goodman and McClintock, well fed by tributaries but prone to warming, which the site blames partly on beaver dams on the feeder creeks.
Goodman Park is reached from US 141 at Wausaukee by County C west about 20 miles, then north on Parkway Road, County I, and Goodman Park Road. The Goodman campground has 15 non-electric sites. This page's gauge, USGS 04067958 near Wabeno, sits a few miles below Cavour at the top of this reach and reads it before the tributaries and the flowages change it.
Yellow above the flowages, two early-season listings
In the 2026-2027 trout guide the Peshtigo from State Highway 8 in Forest County downstream to County Highway C in Marinette County is a Yellow water: a daily bag of 3 trout in total over 8 inches, bait allowed, under the statewide inland season of April 4 through October 15, 2026, opening at 5 a.m. The early catch-and-release season, January 3 through April 3, 2026, artificials only with all trout released, applies to this river by two separate listings: the Forest County entry for the Peshtigo downstream from US 8, and the Marinette County entry for the Peshtigo upstream from County C. Together they cover the whole trout reach.
Marinette and Forest counties are in the northern bass zone, so smallmouth, which show up as the river warms toward the flowages, may only be kept from June 20, 2026 through March 7, 2027, 5 in combination with largemouth at 14 inches, and are catch and release the rest of the year. Muskellunge, the fish the flowages are managed for, open May 2.
Caldron Falls, High Falls, Johnson Falls, and the fly stretch under the last of them
Governor Earl Peshtigo River State Forest wraps the three big impoundments. The DNR describes Caldron Falls Flowage at 1,018 acres and 40 feet deep, the only Class A muskie water in Marinette County, with walleye, pike, both bass and panfish; High Falls Flowage at 1,498 acres and 54 feet, muskie and very good smallmouth; and Johnson Falls Flowage at 158 acres and 37 feet with muskie, walleye, trout, bass and panfish. Below the Johnson Falls Dam the DNR says the river narrows into what it calls the Peshtigo River fly-fishing stretch and describes as a specially regulated trout water, though the 2026-2027 county listing carries no separate line for it, so the Marinette base rule of 3 trout over 8 inches is what the pamphlet prints; check the signs at the accesses.
Miles Paddled covers this reach as a Class I-II run from the Johnson Falls Dam down to Spring Rapids or Shaffer Road, narrower and wilder than the flowages, with seven free remote campsites between the dam and Spring Rapids that need a permit from Governor Thompson State Park and a one-night limit, and it notes that difficulty here changes with upstream dam releases. That is the point to remember: this is a tailwater, and FlyFishingWisconsin says the lower river's water fluctuations leave it with little insect life or natural reproduction.
Below the Peshtigo dam: Green Bay rules
The city of Peshtigo calls its BPM dam the last of six on the river, and says the water below it has become a popular brown and rainbow trout spot, with walk-in access along the railroad right of way directly below the dam, a boat launch off South East Front Street near the City Garage, and limited parking. The harbor at the mouth, a 2,500-acre state wildlife area three miles southeast of town, fishes in spring for perch and northern pike with browns and rainbows common. This is Green Bay tributary water and the trout guide treats it that way: from the Peshtigo dam downstream to the bay the season is open all year, the bag is 5 trout and salmon in total with a 10-inch minimum, a Great Lakes salmon and trout stamp is required, and from September 15 through the first Saturday of May hooks may not have a gap larger than a half inch.
Night is closed for much of the year on the section from the railroad bridge at the Peshtigo City Garage upstream to the first dam: fishing by any method is prohibited between a half hour past sunset and a half hour before sunrise from September 15 through December 31, and hook-and-line fishing is prohibited in those same hours from January 1 through the first Saturday in May. Lake trout are open all year on the same dam-to-bay reach. The hub's Peshtigo gauge, USGS 04069500, reads this lower river; its record since 1953 averages about 675 cfs in July and 574 in August against 2,012 in April.
Bugs on the upper river, and what Wabeno reads
No one publishes a hatch chart for the Peshtigo alone. WiFlyFisher's northern Wisconsin mayfly chart lists the Peshtigo among the rivers it was built on, and read for this river it says: expect Baetis olives any time from the end of March until the water warms in late June, then again with the September cool-down; a Hendrickson window that opens in the third week of April and is over by mid May; Sulphurs and the March Brown and Gray Fox clingers overlapping through the last days of May and most of June; a short Brown Drake spell in June; Hexagenia in the second half of June with stragglers into the first week of July; Isonychia through the heat of summer; and Ephoron, the White Fly, in August. FlyFishFinder's statewide chart agrees that north-woods rivers run later than the Driftless and fire densely in May and June, with Hex in late June and July. Apply all of that to the water above County C; below Johnson Falls the dam releases decide.
The Wabeno gauge has reported since 1998. Monthly means run about 230 cfs in January, 381 in March, 827 in April, 632 in May, 475 in June, 318 in July, 249 in August, 290 in September and 348 in October. No shop quotes a wading number for it, so the 150 to 450 cfs range here is taken from that June-to-October record. Above 450 the deep runs by Goodman are unwadeable; below 150 the warming problem FlyFishingWisconsin describes is the thing to watch, and a thermometer matters more than the flow.