The 2019 Ludington Offshore Classic is over for Team Free Style. We finished 5th out of 35 boats in the Pro Division earning a check for $1000.00. The pictures above were from our trips on the 13th, 14th, 15th & 17th of July. We had to cancel the 16th due to rough seas. As you can see our catches were mostly made up of Lake Trout. There weren’t many Kings caught around Ludington leading up to the tournament. The first event in the Classic was Ruboy Thursday. You needed to weigh your best 5 fish. Top weight wins. We started fishing 4 miles north of Big Point Sable setting up in 180 feet of water. We heard reports of Kings being caught in that area. There were some nice ones caught that day but not by us. The only King we landed was a 5 pounder. We weighed 5 Trout and were way out of the money. Friday the Women & Kids event was cancelled due to rough seas. We used Friday for a practice day trying to find some Kings. We ran way north again and ended up almost to Manistee. We caught a few nice Kings and formulated a plan for Saturday, day one of the Classic. A lot of other boats had a similar plan so when we set up way north there were many boats in the area. We trolled for quite a while without a bite. We never saw a fish netted and none of the boats I talked with had taken a fish. We pulled our lines and ran 2 miles north of Manistee to try for Lakers. Tournament rules are you can weigh 12 fish but only 9 of the same species. We got our 9 Trout and hit 2 Kings there, but only landed 1 of them. The weather was getting nasty. High winds and heavy rain was making fishing very tough. We ran 5 miles back south to fish for Kings again. We hit 4 and landed 2. We had a 15 mile run back to Ludington. We made it back with our 12 fish with about 5 minutes to spare. After the weigh in we were in 7th place with 114.8 lbs. Sunday morning we decided to run back north of Manistee and try for Lakers then head back south and fish for Kings. We took our Trout and 1 King in about an hour and a half. Our Trout were smaller than our Saturday catch but at least we had 9 of them. We ran back south and had a tough time hooking up with big Kings. We ended up landing 2 Kings, the biggest a little over 23 lbs. Our 12 fish weight for Sunday was only 84.5 lbs. We figured this would drop us down in the standings and were hoping for a top 10 finish. Several boats didn’t catch their 12 fish an to our surprise we finished 5th. There were a lot of big Kings caught, several over 30 lbs. with the biggest a little over 37 lbs. Congratulation to Hiatus for winning the Pro Division. One of our best rigs for Kings was a 10″ White Slick Spin Doctor/Pickled Sunshine Dreamweaver Meat Rig. We hit on it on 400 & 450 coppers and both high and low wire divers.
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