One river, two licenses, three hooks
Read this part before you buy anything. The Menominee and its flowages are Wisconsin-Michigan boundary waters, and the 2026-2027 Wisconsin hook and line guide lays out the deal: a Wisconsin resident fishes on a Wisconsin license, a Michigan resident on a Michigan license, and a resident of any other state on a nonresident license from either. The two states' rules differ, and you obey the regulations of the state you are fishing in, which on a river means the side of the boundary you are on. Carry a paper copy of the license. Each angler may fish no more than three baits, lures or hooks in total, goldfish, alewife and live crayfish are banned as bait, and no method but hook and line is allowed within 200 feet of any fishway, lock or dam.
Motor trolling is allowed on the boundary waters with three hooks per person, except in the Vilas and Iron county reaches far upstream. A Wisconsin license holder needs a Great Lakes trout and salmon stamp to fish for trout or salmon from the Hattie Street Dam in Marinette down to the end of the breakwalls in Green Bay.
Where the number comes from: 2.9 miles below the Grand Rapids Dam
USGS 04067500 is on the right bank 85 feet below the County JJ bridge, 2.9 miles downstream of the Grand Rapids Dam, 2.6 miles east of McAllister and 1.9 miles below the Little Cedar River, at river mile 22.6 with 3,930 square miles above it. That puts it in the lower river between the Grand Rapids project and the Marinette dams, so it reads what the hydro releases upstream are doing on any given afternoon. The hub's other Menominee gauges sit near Florence and Niagara on the upper river and below Pemene Creek near Pembine, above Grand Rapids, and describe the water most of the guided smallmouth floats use.
The record at McAllister runs from 1945. Monthly means are about 2,400 cfs in January and February, 3,300 in March, 6,700 in April, 5,500 in May, 3,900 in June, 2,900 in July, 2,200 in August, 2,500 in September and 2,850 in October. No guide publishes a fishable range for this gauge; the 1,500 to 4,000 cfs band on this page is the June-through-October envelope of that record. A river this size with generating dams on it can change several hundred cfs between morning and evening, so look at the last 24 hours of the hydrograph, not just the current reading.
May through October, somewhere on the river
Mike Mladenik, who has guided Marinette County for 43 years and logged more than 7,000 days on the water, says that from May through October the smallmouth are biting somewhere on the Menominee, and makes the river his specialty. Hoosier Fly Fishers' account of a June trip with Nate Sipple of Tight Lines Fly Shop in De Pere is the fly angler's version: fish to 20-plus inches from a boat, taken low and slow and on top, with poppers and deer-hair divers eaten with enough regularity that the writer stopped counting. They stayed at Four Seasons Island Resort at Pembine, reached across a one-lane steel bridge that dates to the resort's 1905 opening.
The flies that trip settled on tell you what the fish eat: a Murdich Minnow and its cousins, the Bart-O Minnow, Galloup's articulated Fat Head, a Dahlberg Diver, and Nelson Ham's Menominee Mud Bug, a rabbit-strip crayfish on a 90-degree jig hook. Take extra. The same account describes pike and muskies biting off flies all day, and a musky rod rigged with 90-pound hard mono for the two takes that came.
Sturgeon: catch-and-release most of the year, one fish in September above Grand Rapids
The Menominee is the one place in Wisconsin's boundary-water tables with a real lake sturgeon harvest. Upstream of the Grand Rapids Dam, the 2026-2027 guide sets a catch-and-release season from June 6, 2026 through March 1, 2027, and inside it a possession season from September 5 through September 30, 2026 of one fish per season at a 60-inch minimum, tagged and registered; the DNR's sturgeon page prices the harvest tag at 20 dollars for residents and 50 for nonresidents, and no tag is needed to release fish. Downstream of the Grand Rapids Dam to Green Bay, sturgeon are catch-and-release only and only during the September 5 to 30 window. Michigan, for its part, added a catch-and-immediate-release season on its side from the Grand Rapids Dam up to the Sturgeon Falls Dam running from the first Saturday in June through the first Sunday in March, reported by the Iron Mountain Daily News in April 2026.
The rest of the boundary table: largemouth and smallmouth bass may be kept from June 20 through December 31, 2026, five in total at 14 inches, and are catch and release at all other times. Walleye and sauger in the river and its flowages run May 2, 2026 through March 1, 2027, five in total with a 15-inch minimum. Northern pike are five with no length limit from May 2. Muskellunge open June 1 through December 31 at 50 inches, except from the Hattie Street Dam in Marinette to the breakwalls, where the minimum is 54. Trout and salmon from the mouth upstream to the first dam are open all year, five in total at 10 inches.
Reading the boundary line and the dams
The state line runs down the river, and because the rules on bass, pike and sturgeon differ between Wisconsin and Michigan, a float that crosses the channel crosses jurisdictions; the Wisconsin guide's instruction is simply that the regulations of the state in which you are fishing apply. The dams are the other structure to know. Sturgeon Falls, Grand Rapids and the Marinette dams at Hattie Street divide the river's sturgeon rules, and the 200-foot exclusion below any dam or fishway applies to every one of them. The Iron Mountain paper's April 2026 note that Wisconsin's inland trout season now opens a month earlier does not change anything here: the Menominee is excluded from the Green Bay tributary trout rules and follows the boundary-water table instead.