Little Manistee Weir — Attraction in Stronach Township

Sadly, this place is run by a group of individuals that could care less about the decreasing numbers of steelhead on this river. This decrease is caused by their own negligence and ignorance.

The steelhead this year, 2021, had made a run up the Little Manistee River early. They were not prepared, nor did they seem to care to change their schedule to meet this. The warmer temperatures of the river in March caused the fish to come up river to spawn earlier than they anticipated. Yet they left everything closed for too long, causing the fish to spawn below the weir (which is actually a win for the fish, yay!)

However they did not get the fish numbers they were wanting to work with, so they left the fish in the holding ponds too long, causing many to die. On another occasion this season, they neglected to open the doors to the ponds, effectively trapping the fish that came into the channel. These fish, being stressed out and trapped with nowhere else to go, ended up jumping out of the channel and dying on the ground.

This place needs to be shut down, unless it is going to be ran appropriately. And by that I mean monitored much closer as to the daily operations and when the fish are actually available. On top of that they need to stop taking the eggs every year. The fish population is steadily decreasing in this river, not elsewhere. They claim lack of food for them to survive, but we all know this is wrong. They population decrease is due to their harvesting eggs year after year. There needs to be a pause a few years at a time to allow the natural spawning so that they can thrive.

One star for a poorly run organization that is ruining a natural Ecosystem....

If you come here when the salmon and steelhead are running up the rivers and the gate is closed on the weir, so cool to see all the fish stacked up. There are regulations about how close you can fish to this structure. Sight fishing for salmon on small rivers such as the Little Manistee is frustrating challenging, landing them is another story. Watch your step as you chase the fish down. I hate...

Closing the w e i r August 15th is too early so few should close the fish Upstream because it's so warm I think the weather should be closed September 10th and would still allow lots of fish to be stripped for their eggs I hate to say it but it was a stupid time to do the repair it should have been done starting in May so that you could finish it by now it's interrupting the fish spawning...