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How to fish the Tahquamenon River lake run

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The run corridor The mouth Tahquamenon Falls (Lower Falls) — 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 Tahquamenon River, 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 16.4 miles — pier to river mile 1.2, mouth to river mile 3.9, lower to river mile 8.0 and upstream to river mile 16.4 — and the pier is a different fishery from the water above the first holding pool. Tahquamenon Falls (Lower Falls) is the ceiling: no run fish above it, whatever the calendar says, so the whole fishery is inside those miles. Lake-run brook trout is 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.

16.4 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.

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-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.

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.

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

Tahquamenon Falls (Lower Falls) 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.

OpenStreetMap node/1595401845, Tahquamenon Falls (Lower Falls)

More on the Tahquamenon River

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