Brule River

About

Brule River — "Burnt," a Michigan Upper Peninsula Boundary River. The Brule River rises at Brule Lake, in the heavily forested western reaches of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and traces the Michigan state line for nearly its entire length (Source: en.wikipedia.org). From that headwater lake the river winds east and southeast for roughly 52 miles before joining the Michigamme River about ten miles northwest of Iron Mountain, Michigan; the two streams together form the Menominee River, which carries their combined waters southeast and empties into Green Bay on Lake Michigan (Source: en.wikipedia.org). Because almost its whole course marks the state boundary, the Brule drains a remote, largely undeveloped corridor where much of the land on both banks is publicly owned and scattered with primitive campsites (Source: en.wikipedia.org). The river runs cold and remains nearly free of impoundments — a single dam sits near its lower end at Brule Island — giving it the dependable, year-round flow that paddlers value; long stretches of slow water broken by low-hazard rapids make it a popular multi-day canoe route of about 45 miles (Source: travelwisconsin.com). Anglers prize it as a cold-water fishery, holding brook and brown trout in its upper reaches and smallmouth bass and northern pike farther downstream (Source: en.wikipedia.org). It should not be confused with the separate, similarly named river to the northwest that flows toward Lake Superior — this Brule belongs entirely to the Menominee system draining Michigan's southern Upper Peninsula border country (Source: en.wikipedia.org).