Menominee River

About Menominee River

The Menominee is the border. It runs 66 miles along the Wisconsin–Michigan line through Florence and Marinette counties, past Niagara and Wausaukee down to the city of Marinette and Green Bay. The survey gives it 4,945 acres of surface and 244 miles of bank — a big river by Wisconsin standards, heavily impounded along much of its length.

Seventeen public landings are on record on the Wisconsin side, including the 6th Street Slip and Boom Landing near the mouth, Bear Point, Grogan Road, and several plain river accesses upstream.

The state manages musky here across all three of its categories on different reaches — self-sustaining in some, stocking-dependent in others, unknown in the rest — which is a fair description of a river broken into a chain of separate impoundments. Lake sturgeon are classified as naturally reproducing, and smallmouth habitat spans nursery water through non-wadable coarse substrate.

A border river means two states' rules may bear on it depending on where a boat launches and where it fishes. Check the current Wisconsin DNR regulations, and the boundary-water provisions in particular.

Written from Wisconsin DNR hydrography and fisheries data. State water ID WBIC 609000.

How the state manages it

• musky · Natural reproduction plus stocking (Cat. 2); Reproduction UNK, stocking occurs (Cat. 0); Self-sustaining via natural reproduction (Cat. 1)
• smallmouth · Non-Wadable Coarse Substrate; Non-Wadable Fine Substrate; Wadable Nursery Waters; Wadable Warm Water
• sturgeon · Naturally Reproducing - ANSRI

Wisconsin DNR fisheries designations. These describe how the water is managed, not what is in it on any given day.

Fishing license

Wisconsin sells them online. Buy one from the state. We don’t know whether you need one — that depends on your age, where you live, the water, and what your guide’s own license covers.