Manistee Lake

Manistee Lake is an all-sports boater’s lake with a back door to Lake Michigan. There are no local limits on the lake itself, so you can ski, tube and cruise; only the harbor channel is slow no-wake. Launch at any of its three ramps, run the channel past downtown Manistee, and you are on the big lake.

It is a long, narrow lake, about five miles long and roughly 930 acres (the DNR notes the figure shifts with Lake Michigan’s level). Most of it is deeper than 15 feet, and it reaches about 50 feet in the middle. If you want a slip or a rental dock on the lake itself, the RV resort and marina at the north end, formerly Insta-Launch, lists docks by the day, week or season.

It lies beside the city of Manistee, with the community of Stronach near its south end. The Manistee River flows into the lake and leaves it again as its outlet, and the Little Manistee River enters at the southeast end. So the lake gathers both rivers before the Manistee River Channel carries their water past downtown to Lake Michigan.

The channel is the useful part. The City of Manistee’s municipal marina sits on it next to the historic downtown, and the South Riverwalk follows the south bank with benches, fishing piers and historical markers on its way east toward Manistee Lake. At the Lake Michigan end, Fifth Avenue Beach and the north pier lead out to the Manistee North Pierhead Light.

In spring or fall, head up the Little Manistee River to Stronach. The DNR’s weir there has been the sole source of winter-run steelhead eggs for Michigan’s hatcheries since 1968. The same facility collects Chinook salmon eggs in the fall, and the eggs are reared at state hatcheries and stocked across Michigan.