Updated October 6, 2026, 12:30 PM

Michigan Steelhead: Whose Fish, Where They Stop, What You May Keep

Live water temperature and flow for 25 steelhead rivers — plus the three things nobody else publishes in one place, and an honest answer about the one thing we cannot tell you.

Rivers

With wild fish documented

Egg-take river in the state

Barriers documented

Gauge readings last pulled October 6, 2026, 12:30 PM. Page rebuilt October 6, 2026.

Every steelhead in Michigan comes from one river

The Little Manistee is the only steelhead egg-take facility in the state, and it produces the Michigan winter-run strain. DNR’s own words: “No steelhead are stocked by DNR in the Little Manistee River. The run consists mostly of naturally reproduced fish.” — so the river that supplies the state’s hatcheries is itself unstocked, and the brood fish are wild.

If you have caught a stocked steelhead anywhere in Michigan, its grandparents ran this river.

In place during the first two weeks of March, out about mid-April once quotas are met. Unripe “green” steelhead are counted and passed upstream; once the quota is reached the grates come out and fish jump the dam.

2026 — the year the lightning hit

Lightning struck the Little Manistee weir on the night of 13 April 2026, taking out main power, the backup power source and the emergency alarm system. Some of the fish being held in maturation ponds were lost. The Lower Platte River Weir was deployed on 17 April — the first time it has ever been used as a backup egg source. The Little Manistee still produced ~2.2 million eggs, concluding 29 April, the Platte weirs ~2 million eggs, 5–7 May, for ~4.2 million against an original goal of 4.6 million.

Michigan DNR, Little Manistee River Weir.

Every steelhead river, and whose fish they are

Ordered by how much is documented about each river, not by how good the fishing is. Nobody has published a ranking of Michigan steelhead rivers and this page is not going to be the first to make one up.

Michigan steelhead rivers: whether the fish are wild or stocked, current water temperature and flow, and what stops the run
River	Whose fish	Water temp	Flow	Run stops at
Bear CreekLake Michigan	Wild	no gauge	no gauge	no barrier documented
Big HuronLake Superior	Wild	no gauge	no gauge	no barrier documented
Little ManisteeLake Michigan	Wild	51°F	126 cfs · low→	DNR weir at Six Mile Bridge
Au Sable (lower)Lake Huron	Wild & stocked	63°F	1,160 cfs · low→	Foote Dam
ChocolayLake Superior	Wild & stocked	no gauge	no gauge	no barrier documented
Two-HeartedLake Superior	Wild & stocked	no gauge	no gauge	no barrier documented
Au GresLake Huron	Stocked	no sensor	42 cfs↓	no barrier documented
Bear RiverLake Michigan	Stocked	no gauge	no gauge	Lake Street Dam, Petoskey
BlackLake Michigan	Stocked	no sensor	72 cfs→	no barrier documented
BoardmanLake Michigan	Stocked	no sensor	98 cfs · low→	Union Street Dam
CheboyganLake Huron	Stocked	no gauge	no gauge	Cheboygan Dam
KalamazooLake Michigan	Stocked	60°F	1,600 cfs · high↓	Allegan Dam
ManistiqueLake Michigan	Stocked	no gauge	no gauge	The papermill dam
OcqueocLake Huron	Stocked	no gauge	no gauge	Sea lamprey barrier at Ocqueoc Lake Road
RifleLake Huron	Stocked	not reporting	220 cfs · low↓	no barrier documented
RogueLake Michigan	Stocked	no sensor	160 cfs↓	Rockford Dam
St. JosephLake Michigan	Stocked	62°F	3,070 cfs · high↓	Ladders, then Twin Branch Dam
Thunder BayLake Huron	Stocked	no gauge	no gauge	Ninth Street Dam
BetsieLake Michigan	Not yet checked	no gauge	no gauge	Homestead Dam
Big ManisteeLake Michigan	Not yet checked	58°F	1,540 cfs→	Tippy Dam
GrandLake Michigan	Not yet checked	60°F	2,470 cfs · low↓	Sixth Street Dam, Grand Rapids
MuskegonLake Michigan	Not yet checked	63°F	1,170 cfs · low→	Croton Dam
Pere MarquetteLake Michigan	Not yet checked	no sensor	513 cfs↓	no barrier documented
PlatteLake Michigan	Not yet checked	no sensor	124 cfs · low→	DNR weir below the hatchery
WhiteLake Michigan	Not yet checked	no sensor	320 cfs · high↓	Hesperia Dam

Wild fish, stocked fish, and the difference the column does not show

“Stocked” in that table means DNR plants Michigan-strain rainbows in that river. It does not mean there are no wild fish there. Those are different findings and we keep them apart: 3 rivers have a DNR statement or a stocking record that supports wild fish, 3 are documented as both, 12 have a stocking record and nothing published either way about natural reproduction, and 7 we have not checked yet and say so rather than guessing.

Little Manistee — Wild

DNR stocks no steelhead here at all, and the run is naturally reproduced. It is the only steelhead egg-take facility in Michigan — every steelhead the state plants anywhere traces back to this river. Source.

St. Joseph — Stocked

The stocking record carries both Michigan-strain and Skamania-strain rainbow plants.

Bear Creek — Wild

No Michigan-strain plant of any species appears in the DNR stocking record for Bear Creek. A county-wide query returned plants only for the Little Manistee, the Manistee, Portage Lake and the Betsie. Source.

Au Sable (lower) — Wild & stocked

DNR calls it a system that has sustained a robust steelhead fishery for many years and is “thought to be maintained in large part by stocked fish”. Spawning habitat is found only in the Pine River tributary, described as a minor source of reproduction. Source.

Two-Hearted — Wild & stocked

DNR says it plainly: yearling steelhead are stocked here annually and also reproduce naturally in this system. Source.

Rogue — Stocked

Read the stocking record carefully here — the Rogue’s rainbow history is full of Eagle Lake, Shasta, Harrietta and Arlee plants, which are inland rainbows and not steelhead.

Au Gres — Stocked

Practically every recent plant in this system goes to the East Branch (Whitney Drain), not the main river.

Chocolay — Wild & stocked

DNR found the Chocolay’s spawning runs after 1991 were all wild fish. Michigan-strain plants then lapsed for two decades before resuming in 2023 and 2025. Source.

Big Huron — Wild

Michigan-strain plants ran 1983–2004 and have not resumed. DNR’s Lake Superior tributary work found most fish naturally produced even in stocked rivers. Source.

When do they run? What we will and will not tell you

Michigan DNR does not publish steelhead run timing river by river, and we are not going to invent it. We looked hard. Two research passes across the rivers in the table above came back without a sourced run-timing statement for most of them, and the DNR weekly fishing reports for 14 January, 28 January and 18 February 2026 do not mention steelhead at all, on any river.

What DNR does say is statewide, and here it is in its own words: steelhead “enter their spawning streams from late October to early May”, and “fall-run fish are typically the first to spawn, often in March, followed by the spring run fish in April”.

That is a seven-month spread across the whole state. It is genuinely useful — it tells you that a fish in the river in December is a fall fish that has not spawned yet — and it is nowhere near precise enough to tell you whether your river is worth the drive this weekend.

The thing that would fix it is a dated report from someone who was standing in the river. That is the one piece of this page we cannot buy, borrow or scrape, and it is the reason the button below exists.

Were you on the water?

A gauge can tell you the flow. It cannot tell you whether anything was moving, whether the fish were fresh or dark, or whether there were forty people in the hole. Thirty seconds, no account needed.

Keep locations general — the river and public access points. We do not publish pins, and we read every report before anything goes up.

We will tell you when it turns on. The Weekly Rise — flows, water temperatures and what people are actually seeing. One email a week, no account, unsubscribe any time.

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Where the run ends

A steelhead river is only as long as its first barrier, and on some of these that is a shorter piece of water than people expect. Listed below are the ones where a DNR source names the barrier and says what it does. Where the table says “no barrier”, it means no barrier is documented — Fisheries Order FO-200 gives a designated-trout-stream boundary for those rivers, and a designation boundary is not a migration barrier, so we have not dressed one up as the other.

Au Sable (lower) — Foote Dam, about 10 river miles up

The lowest of the Consumers Energy dams. DNR’s Natural River Plan states flatly that fish migration upstream is restricted by Foote Dam.

Thunder Bay — Ninth Street Dam, about 1 river mile up

DNR’s river assessment says the lower dams prevent salmon and steelhead reaching upstream spawning grounds, and treats fish passage as something that would help — meaning it does not exist. About a mile of river is the whole of the run.

Manistique — The papermill dam, about 1 river mile up

DNR: potamodromous fish “can only migrate up to the MPI dam”. No ladder is described. Removal is named as a management priority, so this is the barrier most likely to change.

Rogue — Rockford Dam

DNR’s Grand River assessment says dams on the lower Rogue, Flat and Thornapple block spawning runs.

Cheboygan — Cheboygan Dam

Whether anything passes fish over it is unverified — DNR describes it only as a lock-and-dam for boat passage and water levels, and says nothing about a fishway.

St. Joseph — Ladders, then Twin Branch Dam

Ladders at Berrien Springs, Buchanan, Niles, South Bend and Mishawaka. Berrien Springs was confirmed passing fish in spring 2025; the rest rests on a 1990s assessment that itself warns the designs are inadequate.

Boardman — Union Street Dam, about 1 river mile up

The dam has NOT been removed. It is being replaced in place by FishPass — phase 2 was due to complete October 2026 and phase 3 runs into mid-2027. DNR’s own weir page is worded in a way that reads as though passage is already restored. It is not.

What you may keep — and why the list is interesting

On 1 April 2024 the Natural Resources Commission cut rainbow-trout bag limits on a named list of rivers. DNR’s stated reason was public comment favouring lower limits “in certain rivers that support natural reproduction of steelhead” — which makes the list something more useful than a regulation. It is DNR naming the rivers it believes hold wild fish.

Little Manistee — Johnson Rd. downstream to 300 feet above the weir

The daily possession limit may not include more than one rainbow trout.

Pere Marquette — Rainbow Rapids down to Reek Rd., and again below it

The daily possession limit may not include more than one rainbow trout.

Muskegon — Croton Dam downstream to M-120

Up to five rainbow trout in the daily limit, no more than three trout of 15 inches or greater, and no more than one rainbow trout of 20 inches or greater.

Rogue — Rockford Dam downstream to the Grand River

The Type 4 limit still applies, with up to five rainbow trout allowed, no more than three of 15 inches or greater, and no more than one of 20 inches or greater.

Also on DNR’s list, though we have quoted the exact limit only where we could read it off the printed digest rather than a summary:

Manistee River, Tippy Dam down to Manistee Lake
Betsie River
Bear Creek
White River — the North Branch only. The mainstem is not on the list.

The limit is not worded the same on every river — some carry a plain one-rainbow limit and others allow five rainbows with no more than one at 20 inches or greater. Check the water you are fishing in the current digest or in Fisheries Order FO-200, and see how the Type and Gear Restricted systems fit together — including the Aug 1 – Nov 15 hook rules, which are live on most of these rivers right now.

Where this comes from

Michigan DNR — steelhead · Michigan DNR — Little Manistee River Weir · Michigan DNR — 2026 steelhead egg collection · Michigan DNR — fish stocking database · Fisheries Order FO-200

Flow and water temperature: USGS, instantaneous values, provisional and subject to revision. Regulations were read from the printed 2026 Michigan Fishing Regulations digest. Regulations change and reach boundaries are what matter — check the current digest for the water you are fishing.