Five Mile Creek is a small water. What it holds, and whether any of it is interested today, comes down to water temperature, how much is moving through the channel, and whether the weather has settled down. All three are on this page.

Water · Estimated

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Creek · Republic

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Pressure · Station

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Best window · Today

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Today on the creek

What is worth trying

Three stars is the ceiling

Reading the water

Why water temperature runs the whole thing

Fish are cold blooded, so the temperature of the water sets how fast they digest, how much they need to eat, and how far they will move to get it. That is why the same creek can feel empty in February and busy in June. The figure in the tile above is an estimate built from air temperature and the time of year, not a thermometer in the water.

The three that matter here

Warrior basin creek fish

Species list

What actually lives in this stretch has never been written down here

The three above are the ones anybody who fishes this creek will recognize, and the general run of Warrior basin sunfish and catfish goes well beyond them. A proper species list for the lower end of Five Mile Creek would need a survey, not a guess. If you know of a survey, or you fish it and want to say what you catch, send it in.

The fishing year

By water temperature, not by date

Month by month

Before you go

Before you eat what you catch

Alabama publishes a fish consumption advisory every year

The state updates advisories annually, waterbody by waterbody and species by species, from sampling done the previous fall. Five Mile Creek runs through a long industrial history, so this is not a formality here. Check the current advisory for this creek before you eat anything out of it.

Source: Alabama Department of Public Health, Fish Advisories, updated annually from Alabama Department of Environmental Management sampling.

Where this comes from Creek stage and flow: USGS gauge 02457595, Fivemile Creek near Republic. Air temperature and barometric pressure: the weather station in Cardiff. Water temperature on this page is an estimate from air temperature and season, not a measured reading. Regulations and licenses: Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Consumption advisories: Alabama Department of Public Health.