Freeland's Walleye Festival: forty years of fish, parades, and small-town spring

If you move to Freeland, your new neighbors will explain the calendar like this: there’s winter, and then there’s Walleye Fest. Tittabawassee Township’s hometown has thrown the party every spring since the mid-1980s, and it marked its 40th year in April 2026. It’s four days timed to the walleye run up the river. There’s a fishing tournament, a Friday-night parade, carnival rides, live music, and races. Thousands of people pack a town of a few thousand. Proceeds flow back into the community through the local Lions Club.

It’s the kind of event that tells you what a place values. Freeland has grown into one of the Saginaw area’s most sought-after school districts and bedroom communities. It’s also home to MBS International, the region’s airport. But one weekend a year it’s purely a river town again, celebrating the fish that’s fed the valley since before anyone named it.