Coho season peaks along Chicago's Lake Michigan shore

What's Biting

What's Next

Coho salmon are the top priority through the first two weeks of June. Late May into mid-June is when Chicago-area coho concentrate in the nearshore zone, following alewife schools in the upper 10–30 feet of the water column. The WI DNR Lake Michigan Fishing Report's 2024 data confirms alewife availability is at a multi-year high — that forage abundance should translate into active, well-fed coho willing to commit to faster-trolled presentations. Early morning trolling with spoons, stick baits, or small flasher-fly setups remains the proven approach off breakwaters and harbor mouths along the Illinois and southern Wisconsin shoreline.

The full moon peaking today is a concrete timing cue. Salmonid bite windows frequently intensify in the 24–48 hours surrounding a full moon, with the strongest activity concentrated around first light and the final hour before dark. Plan dawn launches this weekend to capitalize before that window fades. Post-full-moon sessions can still produce but often shift toward slightly deeper water and shorter active periods.

Chinook (king) salmon are staging offshore in cooler depths and will push more consistently into the nearshore zone as June progresses and surface temperatures climb. Downrigger presentations with larger spoons or flasher-fly rigs in the 40–80-foot range start producing once warming accelerates. Late June and July represent the traditional Chicago-area peak for kings — consider this week a warmup. Verify current Illinois size and bag limits before targeting Chinook.

Steelhead are winding down for the season by late May. Focus energy on the active coho bite and the emerging smallmouth opportunity instead.

Smallmouth bass are in the post-spawn transition and deserve serious attention. Tactical Bassin notes that post-spawn bass move away from shallow bedding areas toward adjacent offshore structure — on the Chicago lakefront, that means riprap breakwaters, jetty bases, and rocky transitions in the 8–20-foot range. Drop-shots, tube jigs, and swimbaits with bottom contact are the go-to presentations. Any sustained south or southwest breeze creates current breaks around harbor entrances that concentrate bait and draw feeding fish.

Monitor wind direction and wave height closely before any offshore run. IL/IN Sea Grant's freshly deployed nearshore buoys provide the best real-time wave-height data for launch decisions — Lake Michigan's open-water section off Chicago can develop dangerous seas rapidly with northeast or south swells.

Context

Lake Michigan's salmon fishery enters 2026 from a notably strong foundation. The WI DNR Lake Michigan Fishing Report documented that the 2024 season produced record coho numbers — more than 210,000 fish — alongside the strongest Chinook count since 2012 at over 160,000. The agency credited robust alewife year classes with dramatically improving stocked-salmon survival. Since alewives are the keystone forage for all Lake Michigan salmonids, that surplus tends to carry forward into subsequent seasons through improved fish condition and growth.

For the Illinois shoreline, the late-May window sits squarely on schedule. Most years coho stage near tributary mouths and harbor breakwaters after moving inshore from the open lake, drawn by warming surface temperatures and concentrated baitfish. The bulk of fish typically push back offshore into cooler depths by mid-to-late June, making the stretch from now through roughly June 10–15 historically the most productive period for nearshore coho access without needing to run far offshore.

The Skamania steelhead component is a distinctive feature of Illinois and Indiana's Lake Michigan fishery that sets it apart from Michigan's east-side ports. Unlike naturalized steelhead that peak in April and May, Skamania are a summer-run hatchery strain stocked specifically to extend the Great Lakes trout season into warmer months — they typically show from late May through August. Michigan Sportsman Forum posts referencing west-side pier fishing for Skamania as a current target align precisely with that seasonal calendar.

No direct year-over-year comparison for 2026 versus prior springs is available from current in-season feeds — the most recent confirmed performance data is the 2024 harvest summary from the WI DNR Lake Michigan Fishing Report. This report treats the current setup as seasonally on-schedule, supported by that strong population baseline, rather than early or behind pace.