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Grand River Lake Run — Salmon, Steelhead, Brown Trout

Peak run · Chinook salmon as of 1 October 2026

42.2 miles of run water on the Grand River, from Lake Michigan up to Sixth Street Dam. 5 species run it, on windows curated from MDNR guidance.

Open this river in the app
The run corridor The mouth Sixth Street Dam — the run stops here The piers — 41% The mouth — 9%
The pale water is where chinook were holding on 2026-09-30 — 50% of the run was still out on Lake Michigan, which this picture does not reach. That day's gauge and lake readings were measured. Drawn 1 October 2026, north up, and it is a map of the river rather than of the lake it runs from.

The Grand runs 42.2 miles of corridor over 60 NHD reaches to a hard ceiling at the Sixth Street Dam. The pierheads and harbour mouth hold the first 3.08 miles, the river mouth reaches 13.22, the lower river runs to 33.81, and the last 8-odd miles above the first holding water climb to 42.19. Eight state boating access sites sit in that corridor, among them Pigeon Lake, Robinson, Bass River Recreation Area and Grand River Park.

The windows here are written out as dates rather than months, though they are the staging estimator's statewide set and not a Grand-specific reading: chinook 15 Aug – 31 Oct, coho 1 Sep – 30 Nov, steelhead 1 Oct – 31 Dec, and lake-run brown trout 20 Oct – 31 Jan with a peak of 1 Nov – 15 Jan. The Grand's distinguishing fish is lake sturgeon, spawning on the gravel immediately below the Sixth Street Dam in the middle of Grand Rapids from April into June, peaking in May. Temperature rather than the date is the trigger — the run starts around 55°F and is finished above about 64°F. It is catch-and-release only, a state-threatened species with the possession season closed on this water.

The questions about this river

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

What runs the Grand 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. This river is one of the sixteen the staging estimator models, so the window is shown in the estimator's dated form. Those dates are one statewide set, the same on all sixteen rivers, and no more river-specific than the months they restate — what the estimator adds here is the daily staging read, not a sharper calendar.

The ceiling

Sixth Street 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.

Sixth Street Dam, carried as the anadromous ceiling on our own river map

The run water, mouth to ceiling

ZoneWhat it isRiver miles
Pier the pierheads and the harbour mouth 0.0–3.1
Mouth the river mouth 3.1–13.2
Lower the lower river 13.2–33.8
Upstream above the first holding water, up to the ceiling 33.8–42.2

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

State boating access sites inside the corridor's box, from the MDNR Boating Access Sites record. A ramp is not a wade-in — these are where a boat and a car go, and the bank between them is a question for the public land layer on the live map.

Open the Grand River on the live map →
The Grand River river page — gauges, temperature and regulations by reach →

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.

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