25 documented locations. 75 structures. Antrim County, Michigan.
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Three structures at every location - a hardwood crate packed with brush and rock, a fabricated slab tree, and a stump cluster with the roots still attached. 75 in total, sitting in 15 to 25 feet. Placed 2012-2017 by the Elk River Chain of Lakes Fish Shelter Committee under Michigan DEQ permit 12-05-0008-P.
The Antrim County Dive Team inspected them in 2019 and found them in place. A 2012 survey of one site found smallmouth and rock bass on it within a week of placement.
Always check the current guide before you keep fish. Michigan updates these every year and they can change without warning — what is listed here is the 2026 edition, read in July 2026. The live guide is at michigan.gov/eatsafefish, which has a lake-by-lake lookup and full serving sizes.
Good to about 80 feet in any direction. Idle over the mark and read your sonar rather than expecting to drop straight onto the structure.
T18 and T19 sit 50 feet apart. That is two sites and six structures, not a duplicate - the densest spot on the lake.
We ship 25 of the 26 published locations. One site appears at two different positions on two different official maps, 298 meters apart, and we are not sending you to a coordinate we cannot stand behind.
These are the documented shelters, not every piece of structure in Torch Lake. Plenty goes in without paperwork and none of that is here.
Coordinates published by the Three Lakes Association and the Elk-Skegemog Lakes Association, who ran the project with several partner organizations. Counts, depths and dates come from Michigan EGLE permit 12-05-0008-P via mienviro.michigan.gov.
We didn't put these in the lake - volunteers did, over five years. If this file is useful to you, consider joining or donating to one of those associations.
Frontage here is largely private. The water is public, the shoreline is not. Give docks room and don't leave line on the structure - a shelter wrapped in braid stops holding fish.
The Elk River Chain is fourteen lakes and rivers over 55 miles. Five of them carry documented fish shelters from the same program:
All Michigan fish shelter downloads →
Found one that isn't where we said? Tell us:
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Coordinates are approximate and not for navigation.