BirdTrout

Little Manistee River, Michigan

69 mapped river miles, draining 211 square miles across Lake, Manistee counties, in the Manistee River watershed. 1 USGS gauge report water temperature on it, and this page reads it.

Open in BirdTrout →

Public land — where the bank is open to walk and fish

USGS gauge — live water temperature

Water temperature — the colour of the river, and of every dot on it

58 64 70

50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands, breaking at 58, 64 and 70°F, that the app paints. Grey is water nobody has measured.

Water temperature right now

Live from the USGS — every pill above is live, so the numbers you are reading are the latest continuous readings at each gauge. Provisional and unreviewed, as all real-time data is. If that fetch cannot happen — you are offline, or the USGS is down — the pills fall back to the last value we cached, 30 September 2026, 13:43 UTC.

The character of the water

Thermal classification

Each gauge carries a July mean built from its own daily record — 1 Julys, 2026–2026, measured rather than modelled. A July mean is what decides which of the four bands a stretch of water belongs to, because July is when a trout river either holds or does not.

Every gauge sits at the bottom of its segment, so each number is the warm end and the water above it runs colder. ±1.64 °F on the fit.

The lake run

The Little Manistee River is a Lake Michigan tributary with 57.3 miles of run corridor on it — salmon, steelhead and lake-run brown trout, on their own calendar and under their own rules. Run timing, species and access on the Little Manistee River →

Questions about this river

• Little Manistee River fishing report — what it reads right now
• When to fish the Little Manistee River — hatches, seasons and temperature
• How to get to the Little Manistee River — access, parking and public land
• Little Manistee River fishing regulations — season, size and gear by reach
• Is the Little Manistee River good for brook trout?
• Is the Little Manistee River good for brown trout?
• Is the Little Manistee River good for rainbow trout?

Regulations

MDNR trout stream types, as designated. Types on file cover 54.3 of the 68.7 mapped miles; 14.4 miles carry no type in this dataset. Always check the current Michigan Fishing Guide before you fish — this is a copy, and the Guide is the rule.

Creel across all types: 5 fish, with no more than 3 trout 15“ or greater. Zero (0) Arctic Grayling. Tackle: Artificial lures and all natural bait types allowed. Aug 1–Nov 15: terminal fishing gear restricted to single-pointed hooks & jigs ≤½" from point to shank or treble hooks ≤⅜" from point to shank only when attached to artificial lures.
Type 4: Closed to fishing January 1 - March 31: From 300 feet upstream of DNR weir to Spencers Bridge.
Type 4: Closed to fishing September 1 - November 14 and January 1 - March 31: From 300 feet downstream of the DNR weir to the boundary with Manistee Lake (power line crossing downstream of Stronach Road Bridge).
Type 4: Closed to fishing year round within 300 feet of DNR weir.

Blue Ribbon. Little Manistee River (BR 36), 33.0 mapped miles. MDNR's limits, verbatim — upstream: County Road 633; downstream: Manistee Co. Line.

Fishable reaches

River miles are measured above the mouth, along the mapped mainstem. The reach breaks are the gauges, which is also how the temperature model divides the river.

6 mapped access sites on the mainstem: 0 walk-in, 6 boat or canoe launches. Source: MDNR.

USGS gauges

Every gauge on the mainstem, upstream first. Links go to the USGS monitoring-location page for the site.

• L Manistee R at Nine Mile Bridge Nr Freesoil — 04126195 · RM 11.7
  31 July days of record across 1 Julys (2026–2026) · 125 cfs at last read

Public land on the river

13 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 144,566 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Species

MDNR's most recent survey on this river ran in 2022 at Little Manistee River, Lake County, in a channel averaging 35.32 feet: brown trout, chinook salmon, coho salmon, rainbow trout, at 2,917 trout per acre and 123 pounds per acre. MDNR strata: medium, great lakes accessible, wild trout; regulation at the station, gear restricted.The station has been surveyed in 15 years since 1979.

• Brown trout surveyed
• Chinook salmon surveyed
• Coho salmon surveyed
• Rainbow trout surveyed
• Atlantic salmon stocked only
• Brook trout stocked only

Stocked, per the MDNR record: Atlantic salmon, Brook trout, Brown trout, Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Rainbow trout. The most recent plants are Chinook salmon at Little Manistee Weir (Manistee Co., through 2026); Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Rainbow trout at 9 Mile Bridge (Manistee Co., through 2015); Brown trout, Rainbow trout at 18 Mile Bridge (Lake Co., through 1998).

Historical July mean

The measured record behind every temperature band on this page: the mean of the daily means for July, at each gauge, over the years USGS has one.

Hatches on this water

53 insects are recorded from northern lower Michigan, which is the region this river sits in. That is a claim about the region and not a survey of this stream: nobody has recorded which of them has been caught here. Open the river in the app and the hatch panel will narrow it to the ones whose temperature window today's reading is inside.

And 39 more — the year-round records, mostly: midges, scuds and sculpins, which are in the water every day and are therefore never the news.

Tributaries and watershed

6 named streams meet this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.

• Manistee River 190.1 mi · RM 0.0
• Stronach Creek 11.6 mi · RM 26.2
• Syers Creek 4.2 mi · RM 48.0
• Lincoln Creek 3.0 mi · RM 60.3
• Manistee Creek 2.9 mi · RM 63.0
• Twin Creek 1.7 mi · RM 52.3

Little Manistee River sits in HUC 8 04060103, the Manistee River watershed, and drains 211 square miles, Strahler order 4 at the mouth. 78 NHD reaches carry the name for 68.6 miles in total.

Other water nearby

The closest 6 rivers on this site, straight-line from the middle of this one — not drive time.

• Muckwa Creek 4.9 mi
• Cool Creek 5.0 mi
• Stronach Creek 5.2 mi
• Little Sable River 6.2 mi
• Pine Creek 6.5 mi
• Syers Creek 7.0 mi