The Brown Trout Festival

Every July, for ten days, the city of Alpena throws itself a party built around fish. The Michigan Brown Trout Festival has run since 1975, and Alpena bills it as the longest-running fishing tournament in the Great Lakes. It centers on the waters of Thunder Bay, where anglers compete for prizes on brown trout, walleye, salmon, steelhead, and lake trout, with daily weigh-ins down at the boat harbor.

The festival’s mascot is a single fish. Each year organizers release a tagged brown trout they call Big Brownie, and whoever lands it during the tournament wins a big cash prize. In all the decades of the festival, that’s happened exactly once: back in 2017, when a pair of local anglers reeled it in for twenty-five thousand dollars, which tells you something about the odds.

You don’t have to fish to enjoy it, though. There’s live music from Michigan bands, a beer tent, kids’ events, and a whole stretch of summer evenings along the water. You can find the schedule at browntroutfestival.com.