No one has reported from the Thunder Bay recently.
Live Flow Conditions
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
The Ninth Street Dam and the Ninth Street bridge in Alpena. Note the local naming: the same structure is called the 9th Avenue Dam on tourism material and the 9th St. dam in DNR reports
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 25 – Oct 25, peak Sep 15 – Oct 5
Coho Coho Salmon
Building
Typical: Sep 10 – Nov 12, peak Sep 28 – Oct 25
Atlantics Atlantic Salmon
Building
Typical: Sep 25 – Dec 31, peak Oct 15 – Dec 10
The reason to know this river. Michigan stocks Atlantic salmon here each spring under an experimental programme — one of only a handful of places in the state — and DNR puts the fall return at October to December. Anglers report them at the dam alongside the coho, and hard to catch.
Steelhead Steelhead
First fish
Typical: Sep 25 – Apr 15, peak Oct 25 – Dec 20
Upstream limit
Ninth Street Dam, Alpena 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.
Whose fish
Stocked
Access
The Ninth Street Dam and the Ninth Street bridge in Alpena. Note the local naming: the same structure is called the 9th Avenue Dam on tourism material and the 9th St. dam in DNR reports. Shore and wade at the dam, on rocky bank, or fish from the bridge. With a mile of river below the dam this is a concentrated fishery, not a float.
Regulations
Type 3 water from the Ninth Street Dam to Lake Huron: open all year, artificials and every kind of natural bait legal, and a 15-inch minimum on both brook and brown trout — which catches people out.
What to throw
Dam-pool fishing. Weighted eggs and nymphs, streamers on a sink tip, and small spoons and spinners for the Atlantics if you are not committed to the fly.
DNR The state's weekly fishing report of Sep 30 named coho salmon, Chinook salmon and Atlantic salmon on this water. Read the report.