Ludington Area Fishing Reports

We ran south again today setting up in 175 feet of water. The surface temp was 48.9 degrees. Our Fish Hawk probe was down 50 ft. and the temp was 44 degrees there. We put it on a southwest troll and started setting lines. We only had a few lines set when we hit a big King on our port out down with a pair of regular DW Chilly Willy’s. The King took the main bait set at 55 feet. Our out downs had Dreamweaver Chilly Willy spoons on them. The starboard out down had a DW Chilly Willy set at 45 ft. with a Super Slim Chilly Willy free sliding above it. Both out downs were hot. We took a mature King, 2 Steelhead, and 2 Coho’s off them and missed a few bites too. We took another Steelhead on a 200 copper with a DW Chilly Willy. In case you haven’t figured it out the Chilly Willy is my new favorite spoon. We lost a big Steelhead and a big King on a 10 color core with a Yeck Copperhead spoon. We took a King on a high wire diver out 125 with a 10″ White Crush Black Dot Spin Doctor/Pickled Sunshine DW meat rig. The catch of the day was a 27.50 lb. Lake Trout. It came in as part of a double header. Both fish are pictured below. The Laker dwarfs the 18.6 lb. King next to it. The King took a Natural Glow Dreamweaver Captains Choice Cut Plug on a 8 color core. The Trout hit a 10″ Chrome Spin Doctor/Wonder Bread Spin-N-Glo fished near the bottom. The Trout  weighed 27.50 at Captain Chucks and is currently the biggest Lake Trout  on their leader board for the season. When we pulled lines in 210 feet of water the surface temp had warmed to 54 degrees and it was 48 degrees down 50 feet. We use Dreamweaver Premium Strips in all our meat rigs and pull our coppers & core with Dreamweaver Ninja Boards.

 

We ran south today looking for warm water. The surface temp kept getting colder the further south we went. We finally set up in 150 feet of water and trolled southwest. The surface temp was 48 degrees. The down temp on our Fish Hawk was 42 degrees at 50 feet. We had spoons on all our rods but two. We had plugs on two of our cores. Our out downs were set at 45 & 55. The chute was down 65. I set the 45 out down with a Regular Dreamweaver Chilly Willy and had a Super Slim Chilly Willy free sliding above it. I went to grab a diver rod and when I turned around that rod was tripped. So I reset it and when I turned around it was bouncing with a fish on. It was a Coho that took the main bait. That rod went three times this morning. Our out down at 55 had not had a hit so we put a pair of DW Chilly Willy’s on it. It went twice. We took a Coho and lost a Steelhead on it. We had Super Slim Chilly Willy’s on both our 7.5 color cores but they didn’t go today. At about 200 feet the surface temp warmed to 49 degrees. We worked between 200 and 250 feet of water. We took a big Steelhead and a Coho on a 5 color core with a Yeck Red Laser spoon. We took  a Coho on a 10 color core with a Yeck Copperhead and lost a Steelhead on a 3 color core with a Super Slim Steelie Stomper. Capt. Shane on the Dreamweaver hit a King on an 8″ Kevin’s Girlfriend with a Pickled Sunshine DW Meat Rig on a high wire diver so we put one out on a high diver. It wasn’t out long when a big King hit it and ran out over 600 feet of wire. We fought it for at least 20 minutes before it escaped. We had 13 bites and ended up with 5 Coho’s, 1 Steelhead, and a big Lake Trout.