These are two books I would recommend to any Driftless Angler, especially if the Driftless is uncharted territory for you. These books outline where your trout stamp dollars have gone. More importantly, they tell you where stream improvements have been done, what improvements were done, and when the improvements happened. These improvements can allow a stream to hold up to 40-60% more trout. The next great feature about this book are the maps. These maps are the perfect size using a 1:75,000 scale. The scale on these maps are exactly twice as large as the Gazetteer which uses a 1:150,000 scale. Finally, the most handy feature of these maps are that they chart State, County, and DNR easements. It tells you exactly where you have access!!! It can be a headache finding out if there is public access to the trout streams you wish to fish and these books do all the hard work for you. Iowa DNR maps are far by the best when it comes to quality maps and charting state and county lands but even those maps do not include areas which have DNR easements which provide additional access. Don’t ever head out to the Driftless relying on your GPS or tablet because you will be disappointed over and over again. It is important to have tangible maps with you. Yet another reason I love fishing. It makes you do things the old fashioned way. Another cool feature of this book is it directs you to where you can find the stream in your Delrome Gazetteer. It also shows several feeder streams the Gazetteer doesn’t show.
Now I do have a few critiques of this book. This first critique is really more of a caveat. DNR easements aren’t forever so it is possible you may be disappointed when you head to one and find out they no longer have it. These books recently came out with newer editions so the DNR easements for the Iowa and Minnesota book are as of 2011 and the Wisconsin book is as of 2008. Next, I didn’t like the fact the maps used 3 different shades of blue to indicate the class of a stream. Without looking at the legend in the beginning of the book it was hard to tell which class I was looking at on any given stream. They should have used the same coloring as the DNR. Also, the maps do not include a scale so I found it hard to gauge how many miles of stream I was looking at and how far access points were from one another. It should also be noted that the WI book contains roughly 250 streams and the MN & IA book contains roughly 200 streams. Remember, this book is specifically where most of your trout stamp dollars have gone.
This link should give you a flavor of what the book has to offer visually. The maps are much easier to read in the book than the example cited near the top of the page too.