Ludington Area Fishing Reports

We fished up north today on the bank. We didn’t go back out deep because of the big waves and the boats fishing out there last night didn’t fare too well. We set up in 100 FOW in the 02’s and trolled north. The screen on our graph was pretty clean but we stayed in the 90 to 100 ft. range. We started hitting fish in the 03’s.  There was a strong current so we had our speed bumped up. The Free Style is usually a slow troller, but not today, at least on the north troll. Our wire divers with 10″ Spin Doctors and Big Water Meat Rigs took most of our fish. Erie Dearie has some new herring strips packed in salt and vacuum sealed. We were using those in our meat rigs and we liked the results. Our highs were out 125 & 135 and the lows were at 95 & 105. We had out the usual line up, White Crush Mountain Dew Spin Doctor/Cold Steel Big Water Rig & Glow Blade Blue Bubble/Blue Moo Big Water Rig on the highs and Show Time/Moo Moo & instead of our Dark Green Crush/Moo Moo we had a White Crush/Froggie Big Water Rig on the lows. Our chute rigger 70 down  took 2 fish with a Blue Casper Glow Kingfisher Flasher and a Blue Moo Big Water Rig. Only 1 plug bite today and that came on a 5 color core.  We hit five fish in the early bite and thought it was going to slow after that, but our up troll  between 130 & 150 FOW was good too.  It was fairly steady all morning.

Had to reschedule yesterdays trip due the strong northwest winds. Lots of cold water around Ludington so we decided to back out deep to the stable water and try our luck. We went straight out and a little south again today setting up in the 40’s west. We ran pretty much the same program as Tuesday. We trolled between the 40’s & 46’s. Our out troll was our best.  We didn’t have any rod that was real hot. Just about everyone took at least one fish. We had a plug on a 10 color that went three times. The surface temp was 68 degrees and it was 57 down 50 feet. This was a little colder than Tuesday so we figured the fish would be about in the same area, maybe a little higher. There we a lot of fish in the top 65 feet, but there were a lot deeper too. Our deepest came 80 down on a Yeck Wart Frog. Our high wire diver with a 10″ Glow Blade Blue Bubble/Blue Moo didn’t go today so we replaced it  with a 10″ Blue Bubble SlickSpin Doctor/Cold Steel Big Water Rig and dropped it back to 185′ and then it started going. Our regular size Dreamweaver Beefeaters took some fish 50 down on an out down. We had a Casper Glow Blue Kingfisher/Blue Thunder Big Water Rig 65 down on the chute rigger that was steady. We also put a Blue Aurora Glow Kingfisher/Blue Thunder Big Water Rig  on a 300 copper and that went three times.  A regular Fuzzy Bear Modified Blue Dolphin on a 200 copper went twice. A DW Super Slim Chiznit on an 8 color core took some fish for us.  The boats that went north of the point on the bank did well too.