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Cheboygan Dam, Michigan
Cheboygan Dam is the top of the Cheboygan River run — 4 anadromous species stack below it out of Lake Huron.
Open in BirdTrout45.6361, -84.4797 · Cheboygan County · NID MI00520. Tap the map to open this water in the live app.
What the runs do here
Cheboygan Dam is the anadromous ceiling for the Cheboygan River — the top of the run out of Lake Huron. Fish moving up from the lake stop here, which is 1.7 miles of river below this structure.
| Species | In the river | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Steelhead | Oct–May | The run that carries these rivers now. Fall push from October, spring peak in April. |
| Chinook salmon | Aug–Oct | Thin and variable; peak September. Lake Huron's alewife collapsed in 2003-04 and the chinook fishery went with it. Carried as a thin run rather than dropped, because fish still return to the stocked rivers — but a Huron chinook run is not a Lake Michigan one and this layer will not draw it as though it were. |
| Pink salmon | Aug–Sept | Naturalised, and heaviest in odd-numbered years — the two-year life cycle is what makes the run alternate. |
| Lake sturgeon | Apr–June | Spawns on the gravel immediately below Cheboygan Dam, which is as far up as the fish can get. Peak is May, and the trigger is temperature rather than the date — the run starts around 55°F and is finished above about 64°F. Below the lock and dam at the mouth of the Cheboygan, which is also the tribal assessment reach for the Burt and Mullett sturgeon. Catch-and-release only — lake sturgeon is a Michigan state-threatened species and the possession season is closed on this water. Do not lift a fish out of the river. |
Curated calendar guidance from state run-timing prose, not regulation and not an observation of this river on any day. MDNR run-timing guidance and Michigan Fishing Guide prose, curated.
Ceiling cited as: OpenStreetMap way 329936161, waterway=dam, name 'Cheboygan Dam'
The structure
- Owner
- Michigan Department of Natural Resources Private
- Purpose
- Hydroelectric
- Completed
- 1922
- Type
- Timber Crib
- Height
- 21 ft
- Length
- 580 ft
- Spillway
- Controlled
- Storage
- 83,000 acre-ft · 17,801 acre pool
- Drainage
- 1,515 sq mi
- Condition
- Fair · High hazard potential
- Status
- Under Investigation, Planning, Permitting, or Design for Remediation
From the National Inventory of Dams (USACE). Hazard potential is a downstream-consequence classification, not a statement about the structure's condition.
The water above and below
No designated coldwater reach within a mile and a half of this structure.
Water right now
No USGS temperature gauge we read reports within 20 miles of this dam, so this page has no live number for it. That is a gap in the gauge network, not a judgement about the water.
Getting to it
No listed public access site within 8 miles of this dam.
Fly shops nearby
- KatFisher Bait & Tackle 2.3 mi · Cheboygan · +1-231-420-6024
- Onaway Outfitters 22.8 mi · Onaway · +1 989-733-2472
- The Outfitter 28.4 mi
- Bearcub Outfitters 29.3 mi