The Honor gauge is reporting an equipment fault rather than a value, and it has no temperature sensor either way. The run section below does not depend on it.
Public Access Points
Named Access Sites
Platte River CampgroundUS-31 bridgeDeadstream Roadthe lower riverPlatte Bay
The Platte carries more rule changes per mile than almost any river in the state, and the weir is the reason.
Around the weir
Special regulations apply at and near the egg-collection weir, and DNR asks anglers to stay 300 feet clear while it is operating. The boundaries move with the season — read the current guide before you go.
The lower river
Heavily patrolled during the coho run, and a snagging-enforcement hotspot every autumn. Fish it clean and expect to be watched.
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.
Kings Chinook Salmon
Tailing off
Typical: Aug 20 – Oct 20, peak Sep 10 – Sep 30
Coho Coho Salmon
Building
Typical: Sep 4 – Nov 6, peak Sep 22 – Oct 19
DNR describes returning adults as arriving mid-September through late October. If you want coho, this is the river.
Steelhead Steelhead
First fish
Typical: Sep 25 – Apr 15, peak Oct 25 – Dec 20
Upstream limit
DNR weir below the hatchery The Platte is Michigan’s coho river — the state’s main coho egg-collection site is here.
Access
Platte River Campground, the US-31 bridge, Deadstream Road, the lower river and Platte Bay. Wade. Small, clear, and easy to spook.
Crowding
Genuinely heavy during the coho run, and the lower river is a snagging-enforcement hotspot every year. Fish it clean and expect to be watched.
Regulations
Special regulations apply around the weir and on the lower river. Read the current guide carefully — this stretch has more rule changes than most.
What to throw
Coho take a fly better than kings do. Small bright streamers, comets, egg patterns.
The Platte is Michigan's coho river, and it is the reason coho are in the Great Lakes at all: the first successful plantings in the 1960s were made here, and the Platte River State Fish Hatchery remains the main coho egg-collection site for the upper Great Lakes. It is a small, clear, sandy-bottomed river running out of the Platte Lakes through Sleeping Bear Dunes country to Lake Michigan — closer in character to a spring creek than to the big tailwaters south of it, which is what makes an autumn run of thousands of salmon through water you can see the bottom of so strange to watch.
Did you know
The Lower Platte weir had never been used as a backup steelhead egg source until 17 April 2026, when lightning knocked out power at the Little Manistee and DNR deployed it for the first time.