Door County, Sheboygan salmon fishery rides 2024's record harvest wave

What's biting

What's next

With no fresh NOAA buoy or USGS gauge readings pulled for this cycle, we can't chart a precise 2-3 day temperature or wave trend for Door County or Sheboygan waters, so plan around typical late-July Lake Michigan patterns rather than a specific forecast. Surface temps this time of year normally push into the upper 60s to low 70s, which pushes Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead down toward the thermocline in 60-100+ feet of water, especially during afternoon sun; expect the bite to hold better early and late in the day as fish move shallower to feed.

The DNR's Lake Michigan Fishing Report notes 2024 produced a record coho harvest and the best Chinook catch since 2012, with stronger alewife survival supporting stocked salmon and trout classes; if that trend has carried into 2026, anglers working the open-water program spread with spoons, flies, and meat rigs should keep finding fish through August as the program matures into late summer.

Tonight's full moon can shift feeding windows toward overnight and early dawn for both salmon program fish and nearshore smallmouth bass, so a pre-dawn start is worth planning around this weekend rather than assuming a mid-morning bite will hold.

For shore and nearshore anglers, smallmouth bass around Door County reefs and rock structure should stay active through the coming days as summer water temps hold; the DNR's ongoing public process on smallmouth bass management in Green Bay and northern Lake Michigan is a regulatory conversation, not a bite signal, but it's worth checking current regs before harvesting fish from either fishery this season.

Boaters headed for Rowley's Bay near Newport State Park in Liberty Grove should confirm the launch has reopened; the DNR's announced closure ran from ice-off through roughly May 31 for concrete work, so it should be back in service, but conditions crews sometimes run long. No shop or charter intel came through this cycle to confirm specific bays or depths producing right now, so lean on your electronics and typical summer thermocline depths until fresher reports post.

Context

WI Lake Michigan's Door County and Sheboygan fisheries are built around a stocked salmon and trout program layered onto naturally reproducing smallmouth bass, walleye, and other species, and the available DNR reporting suggests the program is in a strong stretch rather than a down cycle. The DNR's Lake Michigan Fishing Report highlights 2024 as a standout year for the harvest program, with a record coho salmon harvest (over 210,000 fish) and the best Chinook salmon catch since 2012 (over 160,000 fish), attributed to improved alewife forage survival supporting recent stocked classes. That's a meaningfully stronger baseline than the fishery saw for much of the 2010s, when alewife crashes suppressed salmon growth and survival.

Management attention has stayed active heading into this season: the DNR hosted a public meeting on lake whitefish total allowable catch for Lake Michigan and Green Bay in October 2025, and separately held meetings on smallmouth bass management in Green Bay and northern Lake Michigan and on the use of net pens for salmon rearing. None of that is a current bite signal, but it points to a fishery under active study rather than one in decline, which is broadly consistent with a program still riding the momentum described above.

We don't have angler intel specific to Door County or Sheboygan conditions from this cycle, so we can't say whether this particular week is running ahead of, behind, or on typical pace for late July. Treat the species status above as seasonal expectation grounded in seasonal biology and the DNR's recent-year harvest trend, not a confirmed on-the-water report, until fresher shop or charter intel comes in.