Cheboygan River Lake Run — Salmon, Steelhead, Brown Trout

Peak run · Chinook salmon as of 1 October 2026

1.7 miles of run water on the Cheboygan River, from Lake Huron up to Cheboygan Dam. 4 species run it, on windows curated from MDNR guidance.

Open this river in the app

The run corridor The mouth Cheboygan Dam — the run stops here

The colour is this river's run stage today, read off MDNR run-timing guidance. Where along the corridor the fish are is not modelled here — only the sixteen rivers the staging estimator covers carry that. Drawn 1 October 2026, north up, and it is a map of the river rather than of the lake it runs from.

1.7corridor miles
1NHD reaches
4species that run
Lake Huronthe lake they come from

The Cheboygan is the shortest of these Lake Huron corridors: 2.7 miles over 11 NHD reaches, closed by Cheboygan Dam, recorded in OpenStreetMap as way 329936161, waterway=dam. The river mouth runs 0.0 to 1.54 river miles, the lower river 1.24 to 2.68, and a short upstream zone from 1.92 to 2.63 reaches the ceiling.

What separates this river from its neighbours is lake sturgeon. They spawn on the gravel immediately below Cheboygan Dam, as far up as the fish can get, below the lock and dam at the mouth — also the tribal assessment reach for the Burt and Mullett sturgeon. The window is April to June with a May peak, and the trigger is temperature rather than date: the run starts around 55°F and is finished above about 64°F. Lake sturgeon is a Michigan state-threatened species, possession is closed here, and the fishery is catch-and-release. Steelhead run October through May, peaking in April; chinook are thin, August to October; pink salmon run August into September.

The questions about this river

One page each, answered from the same records as this one.

What runs the Cheboygan River

Each window is calendar guidance curated from the state's own run-timing prose, not a regulation and not an observation. The stage beside it is this site's reading of that window against 1 October 2026.

Chinook salmon — Aug–Oct peak Sep Peak run. 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 Tail-off. Naturalised, and heaviest in odd-numbered years — the two-year life cycle is what makes the run alternate.
Steelhead — Oct–May peak Apr Staging, 1 day out. The run that carries these rivers now. Fall push from October, spring peak in April.
Lake sturgeon — Apr–June peak May55–64°F Off-season. 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.

The ceiling

Cheboygan Dam is where the run stops. Everything above it is upstream of the fishery — a fish cannot pass it, so the water above holds resident trout and not run fish, whatever the calendar says.

OpenStreetMap way 329936161, waterway=dam, name 'Cheboygan Dam'

The run water, mouth to ceiling

Zone	What it is	River miles
Mouth	the river mouth	0.0–1.7

River miles from the harbour mouth, walked up the NHDPlus HR mainstem. Fish arrive at the bottom of this table and work up it as the river cools and rises.

Access

No state boating access site falls inside this corridor's box. That is the record saying nothing, not this page saying there is no way in — the public land layer on the live map is the better answer for a river fished from the bank.

Open the Cheboygan River on the live map →

Regulations

Great Lakes tributary rules are their own rules: seasons, gear and possession on run water differ from the inland trout regulations, and they differ by river and often by reach. Michigan's regulation summary is here, and the state's own guide is the regulation.

Lake sturgeon is a Michigan state-threatened species. Possession is closed on this water and the fishery is catch-and-release. The MDNR rehabilitation strategy and the Fishing Guide are the rules; this page is not.

Tackle

General guidance by species, not by river — there is no record of what a given river fishes best with, and a page that invented one would be worse than a page that says so.

Chinook salmon Spinning: a medium-heavy 8'6"–9' rod, 15–20 lb line, heavy spoons and crankbaits off the pier, skein or spawn under a float in the river.
Pink salmon Light spinning tackle is enough — a 6'6"–7' rod and 6–10 lb line. Small pink and orange spinners, spoons and flies.
Steelhead Float fishing: a long 10'6"–13' rod, 8–12 lb main line, spawn bags, beads or jigs under a slip float — the method that covers a run without wading it.
Lake sturgeon Catch and release only, and this is the one species on this surface where the tackle note is a handling note. Do not lift a sturgeon out of the water, do not hold it vertically, and support it fully if it must be moved.

Nearby run rivers

The next corridors up and down this shore, nearest first.

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