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How to fish the Sturgeon River (Baraga County) lake run

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The run corridor The mouth Prickett — 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 30 September 2026, north up, and it is a map of the river rather than of the lake it runs from.

Spinning and float tackle for the salmon and a fly rod for the steelhead is the short answer on the Sturgeon River (Baraga County), and the long one changes by species: coho salmon, steelhead, lake-run brown trout and pink salmon all run this corridor and they are not fished the same way. The water splits into 4 zones over 41.3 miles — pier to river mile 1.1, mouth to river mile 3.0, lower to river mile 8.1 and upstream to river mile 41.3 — and the pier is a different fishery from the water above the first holding pool. Prickett is the ceiling: no run fish above it, whatever the calendar says, so the whole fishery is inside those miles. Lake-run brook trout and Lake sturgeon are catch-and-release water here, and the handling matters more than the tackle does. Tackle guidance on this site is per species and never per river.

41.3 corridor miles · Lake Superior · windows curated from MDNR guidance · page built 30 September 2026

Tackle, by species

General guidance per species and never per 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.

Coho salmon

Spinning: a medium 7'–8'6" rod, 10–14 lb line, small spoons and spinners. Coho chase, and a moving bait outfishes a still one.

Fly: 7–8 weight, streamers and egg patterns, 8–12 lb tippet.

Lake-run brook trout

Catch and release, and tackle chosen to make that survivable: barbless hooks, a net that keeps the fish in the water, and heavy enough line to land it fast rather than play it out.

Fly: 5–6 weight, streamers and soft hackles. Check the state guide before fishing for these at all — the rules on coasters are not the general rules.

Coasters are a managed restoration fishery under special catch-and-release regulations on much of this shore, and the rules differ river by river. Read the state guide for the water you are on.

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.

Fly: 7–8 weight single-hand or a switch rod, egg and nymph patterns on a dead drift, swung streamers in the fall push. 6–10 lb tippet.

Lake-run brown trout

Spinning: a medium 7'–8' rod, 8–12 lb line, minnow plugs and spoons fished at dusk and after dark, which is when these fish move.

Fly: 7–8 weight, large articulated streamers on a sink tip, 10–12 lb tippet.

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.

Fly: 5–6 weight, small pink marabou patterns. The fish is two to four pounds and heavy gear takes the fishing out of it.

Lake trout

Spinning: medium-heavy tackle, 12–17 lb line, spoons and heavy jigs worked deep in the lower river and off the pierheads.

Fly: 8 weight with a fast sinking line, large baitfish patterns.

Lake trout carry their own seasons and bag limits in the Great Lakes and their tributaries, and they are not the trout limits.

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.

Fishing for sturgeon is closed on most of this water. Read the state guide for the river you are standing on before you make a cast at one.

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.

Zone by zone, mouth to ceiling

The corridor's own zones, with river miles walked up the NHDPlus HR mainstem from the harbour mouth. Fish arrive at the top of this table and work down it as the river cools and rises.

The ceiling

Prickett stops the run. There are no run fish above it whatever the calendar says, so every mile of this fishery is below it — which is also why the water immediately under a ceiling is the most crowded water on a run river in September.

USACE NID MI00193 'Prickett', River or Stream Name 'Sturgeon River', Source Agency Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

More on the Sturgeon River (Baraga County)

Nearby run rivers

The rest of the run

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