Which Sturgeon this is
Michigan has at least three rivers by this name and the DNR regulates each differently, so the first job is to say which one the gauge is on. USGS 04065650 is at the US-2 bridge in Loretto, Dickinson County, on 389 square miles of drainage in the Menominee basin. It is not the Cheboygan County Sturgeon at Wolverine that runs to Burt Lake, and it is not the Houghton and Baraga County Sturgeon of the gorge and Prickett Dam. This one rises where its East and West branches meet in central Dickinson County, flows south past Foster City and Loretto, and enters the Menominee River near Norway, a short way above the Sturgeon Falls Dam. The data page for this water pools gauges from all three rivers; this guide follows the Loretto gauge only, and every rule below is the Dickinson County rule.
An unlisted mainstem and Type 1 branches
The 2026 Michigan Fishing Regulations print exactly one stream under Dickinson County, and it is the Ford River. The Sturgeon mainstem is not classified as a Type 1 to 4 trout stream, and the state's designated trout stream order, Fisheries Order 210.27, lists only the branches and feeders: the West Branch Sturgeon upstream from T41N R29W Section 13, the East Branch upstream from the bridge in T43N R29W Section 35, the South Branch of the East Branch, Pine Creek above its mouth in T39N R29W Section 12, and Turners, Fitzgerald, Hamilton, Beaver, Fern, Browns, Seiberts, Pollock, Pocans, Mitchell, Solberg Lake, Skunk, Lost and Cassidy creeks above named points. Those designated waters are Type 1: open the last Saturday in April through September 30, brook trout 7 inches, browns 8, rainbows 10, five fish with no more than three at 15 inches or longer, any bait.
The mainstem from the branch confluence down to the Menominee falls under the digest's rule for streams not classified by type: open to trout fishing all year with an 8-inch minimum, 7 for brook trout, five fish with no more than three 15 inches or longer, artificial lures and natural bait both legal. Warm-water species take the Upper Peninsula inland dates, walleye and pike from May 15 to March 15 at 15 and 24 inches, bass from the Saturday before Memorial Day at 14 inches. Chumming is prohibited on classified trout streams.
Brook trout in the branches, warmer water by Loretto
The DNR's fishing-waters list for the Northern Lake Michigan unit puts brook trout in the West Branch Sturgeon in T42N R29W Sections 30 and 35 and in Pine Creek, which Dickinson County's own tourism page describes as rising in Randville, running through the Copper Country State Forest and ending at Norway. The county page also points to the West Branch and its tributaries along M-69 past Randville. The state's river classification layer explains why the mainstem is not a trout listing: the reach around the old Foster City gauge on County Road 569 is a warm transitional small river with a median flow of 96 cfs, and the Loretto reach is a warm transitional large river with a 128 cfs median and medium gradient over its last ten miles. A DNR technical report on that County Road 569 reach, four miles south of Foster City, found it wide and shallow over sand. Nothing has been stocked in the system since 150 rainbows went into the East Branch at Foster City in June 2013; the brook trout you find in the branches are wild fish. For the lower river the county lists Sturgeon Falls Impoundment, 265 acres, for largemouth and smallmouth, reached from US-2 by County Road 577.
Where it meets the Menominee
The Sturgeon's mouth is boundary water, and the Michigan-Wisconsin rules on pages 24 and 25 of the digest take over the moment you drift into the Menominee: up to three lines, no crayfish for bait, smallmouth from the third Saturday in June, walleye at one fish from March 2 until the first Saturday in May and five after that, pike from the first Saturday in May with no size limit. Sturgeon Falls, just below the confluence, was the natural barrier that stopped lake sturgeon migrating some 70 miles up from Green Bay, and the dam there now marks the top of the catch-and-immediate-release sturgeon reach. The September 10, 2026 order changed the Menominee sturgeon seasons after the digest went to print: catch and release from the first Saturday in June to the first Sunday in March, and one 60-inch fish per season with mandatory registration from the first Saturday in September to September 30 above the Grand Rapids Dam. Outdoor Michigan lists a Loretto boat launch and a Sturgeon River Mouth launch, and Bergen Backwater is nearby on the Menominee.
The Loretto gauge, and a regional hatch calendar
The US-2 gauge has only reported since April 2011, and no shop publishes a wading number for it, so the 120 to 300 cfs band on this page is the gauge's own record: monthly means of about 160 cfs in January, 148 in February, 332 in March, 962 in April, 664 in May, 417 in June, 258 in July, 159 in August, 205 in September, 293 in October and 277 in November. Snowmelt runs the river up past 3,000 cfs in a wet April; NOAA's crests at Loretto include 3,700 cfs on April 16, 2023 and 3,780 on June 16, 2017, and no flood categories are set. Once the June mean is past, the mainstem is wadeable most of the way to fall.
No hatch chart exists for this river. The chart below is Superior Flies' Upper Peninsula emergence chart, a regional table sourced from Trails to Trout: Hendricksons from May 4 with a mid-May peak, Sulphurs from May 29 peaking late June to mid July, Gray Drakes June 3 to 29, Brown Drakes June 15 to July 18 in the late evening, Hex June 24 to July 24 between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., Isonychia from June 29 to the end of September, Tricos from August 3 in the mornings, and olives from late April to September with a fall brood into November. It is marked unverifiable because it describes the peninsula, not this water, and it will run early on the branches after a warm spring.