Lake Michigan Coho Running; Door County Launch Out Through Month-End

What's Biting

What's Next

The New Moon falling on May 17 tends to spread salmon and trout feeding activity across daylight hours rather than concentrating it at dawn and dusk — a favorable pattern for trollers who can run all day. Without a sharp lunar peak to time around, early morning and late afternoon remain the most consistent windows, but midday passes through the productive depth zones are worth running.

With the month past its midpoint, the coho window along the Door County and Sheboygan shoreline is at or approaching its seasonal apex. Coho tend to stage in the upper water column — trolling spoons or body baits in the 20–40 foot zone near nearshore structure and any observable surface temperature breaks is the conventional play. The excellent 2024 alewife survival documented by the WI DNR Lake Michigan Fishing Report suggests the forage base remains strong; fish that benefited from those favorable stocking conditions are now a year older and heavier.

Brown trout remain a nearshore target through the end of May. Pier anglers in Sheboygan and along the Door County Lake Michigan shoreline can find fish working the shallows before warming surface temps push them deeper as June approaches. Flat-lining or shallow-running divers off breakwalls is the typical approach for this stage of the season.

Chinook are in a building phase rather than at peak. Larger kings will begin staging farther offshore — typically 80–120 feet — as June arrives and the thermocline firms up. Running downriggers in the 30–60 foot range is a reasonable starting depth, with baitball activity on sonar serving as the primary locating cue.

The Rowley's Bay closure runs through approximately May 31, so any Door County excursion near Newport State Park requires an alternate launch confirmed in advance. Memorial Day weekend traffic will complicate last-minute pivots — plan accordingly. Other Door County access points on both the Green Bay and open-lake sides remain available.

Context

May is historically one of the most productive months on Wisconsin's Lake Michigan shoreline, and the 2026 season arrives on the heels of an exceptionally strong 2024 benchmark. The WI DNR Lake Michigan Fishing Report confirmed that over 210,000 coho were harvested statewide in 2024 — a record — along with 160,000-plus Chinook, the best showing since 2012. The DNR attributed that performance to robust recent alewife year classes, which improved stocked-salmon survival rates substantially. Those same alewife classes continue to underpin the forage base going into 2026, which bodes well for fish condition and feeding aggression throughout the spring run.

For Door County and Sheboygan specifically, mid-May typically sees coho staging from the shoreline out to roughly 60 feet of water, with brown trout overlapping in the shallower inshore zone. Water temperatures in the upper 40s to low 50s °F are the regional norm for this period, though no live buoy data was available at report time to confirm where 2026 is tracking against that baseline.

On the management side, the WI DNR has been working through proposed new Total Allowable Catch figures for lake whitefish in Lake Michigan and Green Bay — a signal that whitefish stocks are under active review. Anglers targeting whitefish in these waters should verify current creel limits and any updated TAC regulations before harvesting, as numbers may be in transition for the 2026 season.

The WI DNR also hosted public meetings on smallmouth bass management in Green Bay and northern Lake Michigan, reflecting sustained focus on that population along the Door Peninsula's Green Bay side. Smallmouth activity in late May typically builds as nearshore temps push into the upper 50s °F, making the rocky shoreline structure around Door County one of the more reliable late-spring smallmouth windows in the region.