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Fall Stocking Starts, and Michigan Changed the Rules Last Week
Hatchery trucks roll in the last week of September across the Northeast, while a pair of Michigan fisheries orders took effect September 10.
Michigan's Natural Resources Commission enacted changes to two fisheries orders effective September 10. One governs trout and salmon on inland lakes and clarifies possession limits to better match the fish actually present in those waters. The other aligns Michigan with Wisconsin on the catch-and-immediate-release lake sturgeon season on the Menominee River, across Dickinson, Iron and Menominee counties.
The important part for anyone heading out: these changes are not in the printed 2026 regulations. The digital version and the state's hunt-and-fish app carry the current rules; the booklet in your truck does not.
Further east, fall stocking is about to start. Massachusetts runs its fall program from roughly the last full week of September through mid-October, with tens of thousands of rainbows over twelve inches and a good share over fourteen, on top of the spring release. New Jersey combined its fall and winter programs this year and added fish, putting the total near 29,000.
Maine's biologists make the case for the season better than a stocking table does. Brook trout are coloring up for the spawn and moving again after the summer lull, warmwater species are still feeding hard in the early part of the month, and the rivers come back to life as the water cools. Fewer people, too.
As always the regulation that applies is the one for the specific water, and several of these states keep late-season ponds under artificial-lure-only and catch-and-release rules that differ from the general season.
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