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Escanaba No 1 Dam, Michigan
Escanaba No 1 Dam is the top of the Escanaba River run — 5 anadromous species stack below it out of Lake Michigan.
Open in BirdTrout45.795, -87.078333 · Delta County · NID MI00164. Tap the map to open this water in the live app.
What the runs do here
Escanaba No 1 Dam is the anadromous ceiling for the Escanaba River — the top of the run out of Lake Michigan. Fish moving up from the lake stop here, which is 1.4 miles of river below this structure.
| Species | In the river | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Chinook salmon | Aug–Oct | Fish stage off the harbour through August and enter as the river cools; the run peaks in October. |
| Coho salmon | Sept–Nov | Overlaps the chinook run and holds later; peak October and November. |
| Steelhead | Oct–May | Two runs on one calendar — a fall push from October that winters in the river, and the spring run that peaks March through April. |
| Lake-run brown trout | Sept–Nov | Runs with the salmon and stays after them; peak October. |
| Lake trout | Oct–Nov | A fall movement out of the lake into the lower river; peak mid-October to mid-November. Not a salmon run in scale — lake trout spawn mainly on the lake's own reefs and this is the tributary edge of that. |
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: USACE NID MI00164 'Escanaba No 1 Dam', River or Stream Name 'Escanaba River', Source Agency Michigan
The structure
- Owner
- Upper Peninsula Power Company Private
- Purpose
- Hydroelectric
- Completed
- 1907
- Type
- Gravity
- Height
- 31 ft
- Length
- 800 ft
- Spillway
- Controlled, 438 ft wide
- Storage
- 2,000 acre-ft · 125 acre pool
- Drainage
- 892 sq mi
- Condition
- Not Rated · Low hazard potential
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
| Gauge | Distance | Temp | Flow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Escanaba River at Cornell, MI | 10.2 mi | 57.9 °F | 261 cfs |
| Ford River near Hyde, MI | 6.6 mi | — | 37 cfs |
Live from USGS. A gauge miles away is a gauge miles away — the distance column is there so you can discount it. A hydro dam's releases move the flow below it on a schedule the gauge sees and this page does not. 1 of the gauges above is not sending water temperature at all — a stopped gauge still answers with the last value it ever sent and nothing to say so, so those rows carry a modelled figure where one can be fitted, marked as modelled, and a dash where it cannot.
Getting to it
No listed public access site within 8 miles of this dam.
Fly shops nearby
- Caddis Shack Fly Fishing 3.5 mi