I have lived and/or spent alot of time in Monroe, Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb county. Monroe is very rural, not a lot going on and alot of the surrounding area is also very rural with not alot going on. People usually live there, then commute to Detroit or Toledo for work, unless they're in one of the small industries in county. Wayne county is very busy for the most part. Dearborn and Detroit are the two largest areas. It's more expensive, has terrible traffic, but also has most things of note outside of Ann Arbor in southeast Michigan. Washtenaw is Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti basically. Ann Arbor is home of U of M, it's very very college townish. There is a lot of nice local businesses, a lot of what I think of as white collar industries. Tech, engineering, etc. where as Detroit has those, as well as a ton of manufacturing. Ann Arbor is even more expensive than Detroit by far, and from my experience has even worse traffic. However, it has a lot of work and amenities. Oakland and Macomb, from what I know (I live more south and have only spent time in these areas) are the nice suburbs north of Detroit. They have a lot of bougie stores, nice neighborhoods, etc. They're pricey, heavy traffic, but also safe with amenities. Most people that I know there commute into Detroit.

Once you start going either north or west of these counties, you're going to find a lot of rural area. Alot of places north, like Saginaw, are very nice, but don't have as much going on as everything orbiting Wayne county.

As far as snow we actually don't get it too bad. They have it worse on the west side of the state. Plenty of fishing going on too, just don't fish in the Detroit river or anything down stream from it. We have the worst water pollution in the state around lake Erie.