There is no USGS gauge on this river. No flow, no water temperature, no normal to compare against — not a fault, simply a river nobody measures. The run status below leans on the calendar and on dated reports instead, and says so where it does.
Public Access Points
Named Access Sites
River Access Park on West Main Street in Harveyabout 1500 feet up from Lake Superior; the DNR access and accessible fishing pier on M-28; the Mangum RoadGreen Bay Street and Green Garden launches; and the Beckman Road bridge upstream
Run status is rebuilt twice a day from the live gauge and the DNR's own run windows. The windows are typical timing, not a forecast — what actually moves fish is water temperature and a rise, and the run tracker carries both for every river at once.
Coho Coho Salmon
Building
Typical: Sep 10 – Nov 12, peak Sep 28 – Oct 25
Coho and steelhead are the two migratory species DNR names for the Chocolay. Chinook is not among them, so this page does not list it.
Steelhead Steelhead
First fish
Typical: Oct 2 – Apr 22, peak Nov 1 – Dec 27
A Lake Superior river, and the timing shows it. DNR reports have steelhead still moving up through late April and into mid-May, driven by snowmelt — weeks behind the Lake Michigan pattern.
Whose fish
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.
Access
River Access Park on West Main Street in Harvey, about 1,500 feet up from Lake Superior; the DNR access and accessible fishing pier on M-28; the Mangum Road, Green Bay Street and Green Garden launches; and the Beckman Road bridge upstream. Both, by section. DNR calls the Beckman Road water easily wadeable; the lower river is small-boat and kayak water off a concrete ramp.
Regulations
Type 3 from the Big Creek confluence down to Lake Superior — open all year, bait legal, 15-inch minimum on brook and brown trout. Above Big Creek it is Type 1 and closes on 30 September.
What to throw
Superior steelhead water. Eggs and nymphs under an indicator, or swung soft hackles and small buggers.
DNR The state's weekly fishing report of Sep 30 named lake-run brown trout and coho salmon on this water. Read the report.