Ludington Area Fishing Reports

We were caught by surprise again this morning heading north on a 5 hour charter. The water was a lot rougher and colder than we expected. The waves were from the west northwest, and it made getting set up on a north troll difficult for us. We started in 150 feet of water. It was 63.4 on the surface and 43.9 down 60 feet on our Fish Hawk. We had about 6 rods in when the chute rigger down 80 with an 11″ White Crush DW Paddle/Pickled Sunshine Action Fly rubber band stacked with an SS Soda spoon fired. The King took the stack. We were rigged up figuring the temp break would be down deeper, so we had a lot of baits to switch out. Our second fish came on the port out down set at 60 with a pair of SS Half Green Jeans. The fish took the stack. We missed a fish on that rigger too. We took a small King on a high wire diver out 180 with a 10″ White Crush Green Dot Spin Doctor/Pickled Sunshine DW Meat Rig. A Lake Trout took an 8″ Custom Chrome Flip Fin Paddle/Pickled Sunshine Action Fly out 145 on a high wire diver. Our starboard low wire diver out 85 with an 8″ Chrome Frog Flip Fin Paddle/Pickled Sunshine Action Fly took a rip but didn’t hook up. Our last fish came on a 7.5 color core with a Yeck Fireball. We run Morgan’s tackle copper and wire. We use Dreamweaver Ninja Boards, Dreamweaver Deeper Divers, and Dreamweaver Premium Strips in all our meat rigs.

We figured the water would be warm after the south blow yesterday, and we were right. We set up south of the bath house north of Ludington off the bank. Surface temp was 62.3 and it was 58 down 120 feet on our Fish Hawk. The picture on our graph didn’t look real good but we set up and trolled north. By the time we got our rods set the water had cooled to 54.8 at 80 feet and we started marking fish and bait. First fish came on our starboard out down set at 90 with a DW Soda spoon stacked with a Super Slim Soda 15 feet above the main bait. It was a Steelhead that took the stack. Our port high wire diver out 280 took 2 mature Kings on an 8″ Chrome White Crush Green Dot Flip Fin Paddle/Pickled Sunshine Action Fly, pictured below. The fin was not deployed. That same set up took 2 more mature Kings on a 375 copper and we had a hit on our starboard out down set at 100 with that rig on it too. The fin was deployed on the copper and out down. A 7.5 color core went twice with an orange glow spoon. We missed a fish on the port low wire diver out 200 with a 10″ Green Dot White Crush Spin Doctor/A Bomb Dreamweaver Meat Rig. We took a mature King on the starboard low wire diver out 230 with a 10″ Kevin’s Girlfriend Spin Doctor/Pickled Sunshine DW Meat Rig. Later in the trip we dropped it back to 270 and had a fish hit and run and didn’t hook up. Our port out down set at 100 took a Coho on a SS Half Green Jeans.  We took a fish on a mag black glow spoon on that same rigger down 120 and took a small King on a SS Half Green Jeans free sliding above it. We tried several different 11″ Paddles on the chute rigger without a bite. Finally, with less than a half hour left to fish we put an 11″ custom UV Dreamweaver Paddle/Blue Bubble Action Fly down 140 and it took our last King. It felt real good hitting some mature Kings today. We use Margan’s Tackle copper and wire, Dreamweaver Ninja Boards, Dreamweaver Deeper Divers and Dreamweaver Premium Strips in our meat rigs.