Green Lake sits in Washtenaw County in the Huron River watershed of southeast Michigan. A small channel connects to adjacent water, which reviewers note as a decent fishing spot.
Green Lake freezes in winter and supports ice fishing activity. However, with depths reportedly reaching 50–60 feet, the deeper central basin may take longer to develop safe ice than the shallower margins. Always check ice thickness across different areas before venturing out.
What's special about camping at Green Lake?
Green Lake sits inside the Waterloo State Recreation Area northwest of Chelsea — a modest, marshy-edged lake in the Lower Peninsula's largest state park, 20,000-plus acres of glacial hills, kettle lakes, and oak forest between Jackson and Ann Arbor. The draw here is the combination: a rustic campground on the lake's shore, the DNR access site we list, and the recreation area's enormous trail network — including a leg of the 36-mile Waterloo-Pinckney Trail — starting practically at the tent stakes.
It fishes like a classic southern-Michigan kettle: bass along the weedlines, pike in the cabbage, bluegill and crappie for the campground kids, all at glacier-made depths in a bowl the road noise never reaches. Metro anglers treat it as the near-wilderness option — under an hour from Ann Arbor, rustic enough to feel earned. The Gerald Eddy Discovery Center, the rec area's geology-and-nature museum, sits a short drive east and explains the kettle-and-moraine country the lake is one dimple of.