When most people think of Door County, they think of Sturgeon Bay. In the bay, visitors enjoy fishing & boating, charming restaurants, a variety of accommodations, shops, galleries, nearby state parks and more.
Sturgeon Bay is one of the best places to plan a fishing vacation to in the midwest. Known as a top 10 smallmouth bass fishing destination, anglers regularly catch 3 to 4 pounders and bass up to 7 pounds are not unheard of. Smallmouth bass aren’t the only reason why people fish here. The bay is good for walleye, salmon, trout, perch and northern pike. Because the waters in Sturgeon Bay are often calm, anglers with smaller boats get a chance to target big fish on a big water (Lake Michigan), but they don’t have to deal with the big waves that usually go hand in hand with fishing big water. At times, the bay can get rough, but for the most part, fishing conditions are usually good for smaller boats. For those of you planning a trip to the bay, you will have plenty of lodging options to go along with camping available at Potawatomi State Park.
Little Sturgeon Bay
Little Sturgeon Bay is a good-sized bay with a nice public boat ramp with multiple lanes for launching. This is a popular bay to launch out of to fish the bay as well as Larsen’s Reef and the open waters of Green Bay. Anglers catch a variety of fish in this bay as you can find a little bit of everything here. There are some deeper waters, shallow waters with rock and sand and even some areas with shallow weeds. Anglers primarily target smallmouth bass in Little Sturgeon Bay, but northern pike, walleye and perch can be found here too.
Rileys Bay
Rileys Bay is a good-sized bay, but much smaller than nearby Little Sturgeon Bay. The fishing can be very good in Rileys Bay, especially in the spring and the fall as smallmouth bass move into the shallower waters with a mixture of rocks and sand. It’s one of the better smallmouth bass spring spots in all of Door County.
Sand Bay
Sand Bay is a smaller, shallower bay. If you fish in this bay, you need to be careful because it gets super shallow here. It is basically like fishing a giant flat with a mixture of rocks and sand on the bottom. It can be a good spawning bay for smallmouth bass, but it’s definitely not as good as nearby Rileys Bay and Little Sturgeon Bay.
Sawyer Harbor
Home to Potawatomi State Park, Sawyer Harbor is a great place to start your fishing adventure. It has a nice park with camping, bathroom facilities and an excellent boat launch. The waters are shallow here right out of the launch though, so you need to be careful when launching bigger boats out of this harbor.
The fishing is very good in this area with anglers doing well inside the harbor early in the year for smallmouth bass. There is some offshore structure here as well and smallmouth bass will often use this structure as they get ready to move in and spawn. Smallmouth will often be out here after the spawn as well. It’s a decent piece of structure, but it isn’t huge, so if several boats are on it, you will most likely be fishing near other boaters.
When the harbor slows down during the middle of the summer, you are not far from some other good spots in the area.
Shipping Canal
