Southern Michigan parks

Markin glen county campground in Kalamazoo has two decent sized fishing ponds that are all shore fishing that can be reached by walking about 10 minutes from your camp site. All full hooks, nice clean restrooms, good play ground, nice paved biking trails for the kids, place to swim with beach sand. There is usually one train that goes thru while we are there.

Yankee Springs SRA, Gun lake modern campground. straight up 131 about 1.5 hours north of the state line. Lots of shore fishing a couple of fishing piers, some sites directly on the water. Boat ramp in the campground and a real nice ramp on the other side of the channel. I dont know if they rent boats though.

Camp Dearborn rents boats and allows fishing on their little lake. I never caught anything there. It is in Milford (Oakland County, at the edge of the Detroit metro area).

I'm not sure what you mean by "southern" because growing up in Michigan that means south of a line from Bay City through Clare to Ludington, and if you are thinking "south of US-12" or "south of I-94" that doesn't cover many of the places I've actually camped. Almost any worthy campground in Michigan is on a lake, and so are many RV parks, or at least close to a lake. But Camp Dearborn is the one I know about.

Where my family is (Oakland, Wayne, Washtenaw, Ingham, Clinton and Genessee counties) I have reports that it has rained a lot but not flooded. I don't know how flooded you are where ever you happen to be in Indiana. My sister in Genessee county is complaining about how muggy it is from the recent rains. No guarantees, because all it takes is a thunderstorm cell to be stalled somewhere for thirty minutes and you will have a local flood.

Southern Michigan is a very big area so it's very hard to respond covering even 1/8 of it. All along the west coast (the Lake Michigan side) there's hundreds of CG's and in most all areas close to a CG there you'll find places that rent boats and many having different sizes and motors. From 12' fishing boats to large pontoon boats or large runabouts with either outboards or I/O driven.

No need to go into Lake Michigan for big specie fishing if you don't want to as there are so many harbors, rivers, bayou's, lakes, and connecting navigable waterways with lots of fish to be caught. Bass, perch, walleye, catfish, bluegill, pike, just to name some. Boat launches are all of the state and here in the Grand Haven direct area alone (Northern Ottawa County) there's 39 boat launch ramps if renting a trailered boat that's not already in the water or will be put in for you at the rental place. Also 12 CGs here and they are building another big one presently. Yes, live bait also around here even at our Walmart and Meijer too.

Fishing and boating is huge in Michigan just like camping and RV'ing as there's over 11,000 inland lakes in the state and that does'n include almost 40,000 miles of rivers and streams or the Great Lakes themselves. Saturday, we ran our own boat over 70 miles and never even went into Lake Michigan. People in boats fishing or trolling for fish all over like always. Lots of bass tournaments here constantly.

Having your own boat is a lot cheaper than renting if you intend to go fishing a lot but that's your decision. A simple inexpensive used boat will hack it if you aren't going to go out a long ways from shore on Lake Michigan.

Here's one located just over the IN/MI border near Niles, MI. It has fishing ponds and a trout stream. Haven't stayed here, but did a drive by and it looks like a nice well-run campground. You don't need a license to fish the ponds.

http://www.spauldinglake.com/

Another nice campground with a fishing pond. Not far north from the Marshall/Battle Creek area.

http://www.campturkeyville.com/

Here's another possibility, but it has a real lake at the campground and is further north. Years ago I stayed at a cabin on this lake and fished it. There was a good variety of fish. It's located east of Ludington on Round Lake. FHUs.

http://www.timbersurfresort.com/

Thanks for all your suggestions. We live in NW Indiana. So anything on west side of Michigan or central would be good. Just looking for something that is clean and has lake/ pond fishing. If we continue to have rain and flooding, we won't be going anywhere! Thanks again.

I second Yankee Springs State Park. I don't think the park itself rents boats but there are plenty of other places that do. Just search google for boat rentals on Gun Lake. The campground has a boat launch that's connected to Gun Lake via a long channel where all the campers tie up their boats. Gun Lake is rather shallow, clear and warm. Great pan and bass fishing.