Ludington Area Fishing Reports

We fished P.M Lake first thing yesterday morning. We heard of some mature Kings staging there prior to their early run up Pere Marquette River. We had 4 Kings on in the hour or so we fished in there. The 2 pictured left hit at he same time. The bigger one took a 10″ Black Green Spin Doctor/Froggie Big Water Meat Rig. The other hit a glow spoon on a rigger down 32 feet. We broke off another one on the chute rigger with a 10″ White Slick Mountain Dew Spin Doctor/Green Mirage Action Fly and we lost one on a 5 color core with a Lucky Charms Dreamweaver Captain’s Choice Cut Plug. After a couple passes around the lake we pulled lines and headed for the Lake Trout grounds south of Ludington. We stopped in 100 feet of water and lowered our Fish Hawk probe to the bottom. The water temperature on the bottom was 65 degrees, too warm for trout. We then went to plan B which was to run out deep to the 42 line and try it out there. A friend told us they caught fish out there Sunday. We set up in the 41’s trolled out to the 44’s and back in to the 39’s and only took two fish. Today we had the same crew and we decided to go up north and fish the Bank. We set up in the 01’s in 160 feet of water and trolled north. The break was down 120 feet. We took it all the way to the 04’s and never had a bite. We put it on a northwest troll and headed for deeper water. We took a trout down 150 on a rigger and took a 14 lb. King on the chute rigger down 220 ft. with a Tin Can Dodger/Yellow Red Dot DW WhirlyGig. Our next fish was a 26 lb. King Salmon that came on a high wire diver out 330 ft. with a 10″ White Slick Spin Doctor/Green Gasoline DW Meat Rig. It put up one heck of a fight. We thought it was fouled hooked until we saw it was hooked right in the jaw. We took 2 Steelhead on a 350 copper with a mag size Fuzzy Bear Skinny Jeans. We took a Coho  and  2 more Lakers to finish out the morning. We use Dreamweaver Premium Strips in all our meat rigs and Morgan’s Tackle copper on all our copper rods.

Tough tournament for Team Free Style. We started the week out with a good mixed bag catch from up north including a 24.35 lb, 39 ” Master Angler King Salmon. It came on a 10″ White Slick Spin Doctor/Green Gasoline Dreamweaver Meat Rig on a high wire diver. We canceled our trips Monday and Tuesday due to bad weather. We had a great trip on Wednesday that included two Kings over 20 lbs. We were looking forward to the opening event of the Ludington Offshore Classic, “Ruboy Thursday”. We headed north hoping to catch 5 nice Kings. It didn’t work out that way. We only hooked two Kings and one of got into one of our rigger cables and broke off. We landed a couple small Lakers and that was it.  Congratulations to Team Dreamweaver 3 for winning the event.  We didn’t have a woman’s team this year and used Friday as a scout day. We took a few Kings up north, but nothing over 12lbs. and we found some decent size Lakers to the south. Saturday was Day 1 of the Classic. Our plan was to head north and fish the Bank trying to pick up at least three good size Kings and then run south and get nine Lake Trout. We only managed to get one King north before we headed south to the Lake Trout grounds. We ended up catching 10 Lakers but tournament rules are that you can only weigh nine of any one species in your twelve fish catch. We caught another King so we had eleven fish to weigh in. We had been catching some good size Trout in the area where we fished, but our Trout on Saturday were all small. Our total weight was only 47.35 lbs. That put us in 9th place in the Pro Division. Today was Day 2 and we decided to again head north after some Kings then head south for Lakers. The boat traffic was light compared to Saturday and we set up in 110 feet of water and took it all the way to 04:50 working between 110 and 140 feet of water. We only had one bite and we didn’t get it. We saw very little action up there so we pulled lines and ran south to try for Trout. We were just setting our second rod when tournament control canceled the tournament due to an approaching storm. We only got in three hours of fishing so Day 2 didn’t count in the scoring. They paid eight places and we finished 9th. Congratulations to the Sportsman’s crew on their first place finish. The tournament committee did a good job running the event and we are looking forward to fishing it again next year.