What fish run in the Au Sable River, Michigan?

What fish run in the Au Sable River?

The run corridor The mouth Foote Dam — the run stops here The piers — 9%

The pale water is where chinook were holding on 2026-09-30 — 91% of the run was still out on Lake Huron, which this picture does not reach. That day's gauge and lake readings were measured. Drawn 30 September 2026, north up, and it is a map of the river rather than of the lake it runs from.

4 species run the Au Sable River out of Lake Huron — chinook salmon, atlantic salmon, pink salmon and steelhead. The corridor is 10.2 miles of run water over 35 NHD reaches, from the harbour mouth up to Foote Dam. As of 30 September 2026, chinook salmon is at peak run, atlantic salmon is at first runners and pink salmon is at tail-off.

10.2 corridor miles · Lake Huron · windows curated from MDNR guidance · page built 30 September 2026

The run species, one by one

Every species the corridor file records on this river, with the field mark that calls it at the net. Windows are MDNR's curated guidance; a species that runs twice on one calendar carries both entries.

Chinook salmon — king salmon

A dark, heavy salmon with a black gum line and black spots on both lobes of the tail. The gum line is the field mark that separates it from a coho at the net. Kings hold off the mouth until the river cools into the 60s F and then move on a rise. They stop feeding as they ripen, so a take is territorial rather than hungry.

Window on this river: 15 Aug – 31 Oct · peak 15 Aug – 15 Oct
Size: Eight to twenty pounds in the run, and the occasional thirty.
Latin: Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
Stage as of 30 September 2026: Peak run

Chinook salmon in Michigan — every river with a run →

Atlantic salmon

X-shaped spots above the lateral line, a narrow wrist to the tail, and none of the black gum a king carries. A stocked fishery in the Great Lakes rather than a naturalised one, and it enters warmer and earlier than the Pacific salmon beside it.

Window on this river: Sept–Nov · peak Oct
Size: Five to fifteen pounds.
Latin: Salmo salar
Stage as of 30 September 2026: First runners

Atlantic salmon in Michigan — every river with a run →

Pink salmon — humpy

The smallest salmon in these rivers, with large oval spots on the tail and, on a ripe male, the hump the other name comes from. Naturalised in Lake Superior since the 1956 Thunder Bay escape and heaviest in odd-numbered years — a two-year fish, so the run has a rhythm the others do not.

Window on this river: Aug–Sept
Size: One to four pounds.
Latin: Oncorhynchus gorbuscha
Stage as of 30 September 2026: Tail-off

Pink salmon in Michigan — every river with a run →

Steelhead — lake-run rainbow trout

A chrome rainbow off the lake, the stripe faint on a fresh fish and loud on one that has wintered in the river. Two runs on one calendar: a fall push that winters in the river and a spring run onto the gravel. The fall fish are the reason a January river is not empty.

Window on this river: 1 Oct – 31 Dec · peak 15 Oct – 15 Dec
Size: Five to twelve pounds, and bigger on the Manistee-type rivers.
Latin: Oncorhynchus mykiss
Stage as of 30 September 2026: Staging, 1 day out

Steelhead in Michigan — every river with a run →

Nearby run rivers

The rest of the run

Open the lake-run map →Every run river, with where the fish are holding today.Or get BirdTrout on the App Store