Ludington Area Fishing Reports

Tough fishing today. We didn’t get the early bite this morning. Not sure if there really was much of  one. We marked a lot of fish and bait in 90 to 100 feet of water yesterday just south of the Point and all the way to the 06’s. So thats where we set up today, at the Point. We only had a few rods set when a high wire back 145′ with a mag Fuzzy Bear Yellowtail fired. Then our chute rigger down 80′ took off, another nice King. So far so good, but that was it. The bait and fish were not there like yesterday. Talked to a friend on the radio and they were marking bait and fish out a little deeper, 110′ to 120′. We  moved out there and the graph looked good but no more bites. We  put out some meat rigs and moved out to deeper water. We rode quite a while before we hit our next fish. It was on a low wire diver out 170′ with a 10″ Chrome Blue Spin Doctor/Blue Thunder Meat Rig and a Erie Dearie Herring Strip.  After a pretty good run it got off. We reset the rod and it wasn’t out too long when it fired again. This one didn’t get away. We were in 280 feet of water and it looked like we had something figured out, not so.  We didn’t hit another fish until we were pulling lines. After a good fight that one got off too. Most of the boats we talked to were also having a hard time getting anything going. The full moon last night didn’t help things and neither did the bright sun. The fish and bait are there. We had a good crew today and we tried hard to get more cooperation from the fish but they weren’t buying it.  We are hoping for some south wind to get the Bank set up again.

It looked like a perfect morning for catching Kings when we headed north of Ludington this morning, foggy, overcast, and a little surface ripple on the water. We shut down in 100 feet of water and the graph looked good. We were starting to worry when most of our rods were set and no bites. As we were setting one of our last rods a nice King hit a full core with a regular size Dreamweaver Beef Eater on it. That rod took our first two fish. We didn’t have any big morning flurry, but the action was steady for the first few hours. We ran pretty much the same rigger program that we’ve been runnign the last few trips. Our other full (10 color) core had a regular Fuzzy Bear Yellow Tail spoon on it. We took five fish between those two rods.  We took two Kings on a Blue Bubble Spin Doctor/Big Water Tackle Blue Moo Meat Rig with a Erie Dearie Trolling Strip on a 350 copper. The Erie Dearie Herring Strips have been working well for us. We used them on all our meat rigs today. A 10″ Black Crush Spin Doctor/Moo Moo BWT Meat Rig  out 150 ft. on a low wire took an 11 lb. Lake Trout and a good sized King.  The bite was fairly steady until the sun came out. That killed our action. We trolled the last hour without a hit.