Milwaukee River Lake Run — Salmon, Steelhead, Brown Trout

Peak run · Chinook salmon as of 1 October 2026

29.8 miles of run water on the Milwaukee River, from Lake Michigan up to Grafton Dam. 4 species run it, on windows curated from WDNR guidance.

Open this river in the app

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

The colour is this river's run stage today, read off WDNR 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.

29.8corridor miles
38NHD reaches
4species that run
Lake Michiganthe lake they come from

The Milwaukee runs early. Chinook are recorded August through October with the peak in early to mid September, ahead of the Michigan shore, and coho come behind and overlapping them in September and October, peaking mid to late September. Lake-run brown trout follow in October and November, a moderate run with and behind the salmon. Steelhead hold the long calendar, October through May — a fall push from October that winters in the river and a spring run peaking late March into April. All four windows are month-grained.

The corridor is 29.8 miles and 38 NHD reaches from Lake Michigan to the ceiling at Grafton Dam, which this file knows from OpenStreetMap node 353900753 rather than a dam inventory. The pierheads and harbour mouth take the first 0.65 miles, the river mouth reaches to 7.48, the lower river is a short 1.52 miles to 9.0, and everything above that — 9.0 to 29.76 — sits above the first holding water and below the dam.

The questions about this river

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

What runs the Milwaukee 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. Stage off the harbour through August and run as the river cools; peak early to mid September, ahead of the Michigan shore.
Coho salmon — Sept–Oct peak Sep Peak run. Behind the chinook and overlapping them; peak mid to late September.
Steelhead — Oct–May peak Mar–Apr Staging, 1 day out. Two runs on one calendar — a fall push from October that winters in the river, and the spring run peaking late March into April.
Lake-run brown trout — Oct–Nov peak Oct Staging, 1 day out. A moderate run with and behind the salmon; peak October.

The ceiling

Grafton 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 node 353900753, Grafton Dam

The run water, mouth to ceiling

Zone	What it is	River miles
Pier	the pierheads and the harbour mouth	0.0–0.7
Mouth	the river mouth	0.7–7.5
Lower	the lower river	7.5–9.0
Upstream	above the first holding water, up to the ceiling	9.0–29.8

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

The boating access record this site holds is MDNR's and covers Michigan only, so there is no access list here rather than a list of the wrong state's ramps. The WDNR publishes Wisconsin's.

Open the Milwaukee 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. Wisconsin's regulation summary is here, and the state's own guide is the regulation.

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.
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.
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-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.

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