Boyne River

The Boyne River is a small trout stream with an easy paddle at the end. Most visitors see only its lower reach, where you can float from Dam Road down to Veterans Memorial Park on Lake Charlevoix in an hour or two, and a Boyne City outfitter will shuttle you and rent the kayak. The Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council counts it among the region’s top streams for fishing and canoeing. Anglers fish for steelhead and salmon below the power plant dam and for brook and brown trout above it.

It is the second-largest stream feeding Lake Charlevoix, about 17 miles long. The North Branch starts just west of Thumb Lake and the South Branch near Elmira, in some of the highest hills in the Lower Peninsula. They join just north of Boyne Falls, and from there the main stream runs about five and a half miles to the lake at Boyne City. The map pin marks Boyne City, where the river meets the lake.

Two old dams shape the river. The Boyne USA power plant dam, built in the early 1900s, blocks lake-run fish from moving upstream, so steelhead and salmon stay below it. An older dam at Boyne Falls holds a small, silted pond. Both warm the water downstream, which matters on a trout stream.