Ludington Area Fishing Reports

We fished Southwest of Ludington today. It was tough not going back up north where we did so well yesterday. After seeing the 6/25/14  23:13 Coast Watch image for Ludington we decided the break we fished yesterday was pushed out of our reach. We ran straight out watching the surface temperature on our Fish Hawk . When it started to drop from 57.7 to 57.3 we shut down, put it on a 260 troll, and started fishing. We only had a couple rods set when an out down set at 35 with a pair of Modified Fuzzy Bear Blue Dolphins took off. It was a big Steelhead that managed to get off after getting wrapped in the line after a nice jump. We had another tug on the same rod, but no hook up. We trolled quite a while before we got another bite. A King hit a Mag Dreamweaver Green Glow spoon stacked above a Tin Can Dodger on the chute rigger. That fish got off right behind the boat. We finally boated our first fish, a Steelhead, on a 3 color core with a Super Slim Starburst. We took another Steelhead later in the morning on the same setup. Fishing was slow. We kept trolling southwest hoping to find a sharp temp break. We trolled out to the 41 line west and never did find the break we were looking for. The temp just gradually dropped. We took a double when the temp dropped from 49.8 to 49.2. We decided to work that area over because  from listening to the radio traffic it didn’t sound like there was much going on any place else. It paid off for us. We started the morning out running 3 meat rigs. We didn’t hit any fish on them early so we pulled 2 of them and only left 1 out. It was 10″ Mountain Dew Spin Doctor/Cold Steel Big Water Meat Rig out 120 on a low wire diver . We took 2 Kings on it later in the morning. We didn’t have a hot bait. We took fish on 3, 5, 7.5 and 10 color cores. No copper bites.

We fished north of Ludington today setting up off the Bath House in 90 feet of water (fow). We hit a fish right away on an 8″ Blue Bubble Spin Doctor/Pickled Sunshine Action Fly out 80 on a high wire. We were trolling north working between 110 & 70 fow. A 10 color core with a Yeck Lighting went next and a Super Slim Orange Signature Series on a 7.5 core hit a fish and we had a double on. We boated both those Kings and then no more action all the way to the middle of the 04’s. We put it on a 330 troll heading out to deep water and hopefully a nice temp break. The surface temp was 57.6 degrees for most of our out troll. It was a slow pick all the way out. A Tin Can Dodger/Green Crinkle Action Fly down 80 on the chute rigger took 3 Kings and an out down set at 55 with a pair of regular size Dreamweaver Golden Eye spoons took 3 fish also. We took a few fish on our cores with the 7.5 color SS Orange Signatures, pictured right, being the best. We finally made it to a break out in 540 fow north of the Point and the action picked up.  It was a pretty tight break dropping from 57.6 all the way down to 41.8 in about a mile. We only had 2 meat bites, both on high wires, so we pulled one and replaced it with a Slide Diver. It was near the end of the trip so it wasn’t out very long but it took 2 nice Kings. One of them weighed over 15 lbs. and was the biggest fish of the day. We had a Super Slim Fireball out 85 with about a 20 foot lead on that diver. A 3 color core with a Super Slim Starburst took 2 Steelhead.  We hit fish on the warm side of the break and in the cold too.