Ludington Fishing Report: 96 Fish Later and We’re Still Standing

5/24/20263 min read

I’m just gonna come right out and say it. Ludington Lake Michigan fishing right now is the finest I’ve ever seen. Cutting straight to the chase with another 6-man limit. No suspense.
No drama. Just another 6-man limit. Well…this one did have a special surprise.

You know the original plan. Seven of us (Me, Charlie Daniels, Kaedin, Tim, Euge, Sister Jenn & Logan.) Leave the dock at 5am. Run straight out. Box 35 hogs. Be back at the dock by 10am drinking Löwenbräu and smoking Cubans.

We immediately had several issues with this plan.//First, I don’t drink. So unless they make Löwenbräu NA, I’m out. Second, I don’t smoke. And I definitely don’t own Cubans. Third, and this one was serious. Logan called off. Claimed he “needed to recharge.” Oh boy. Now the pressure was officially on.

Deep down, I think this whole thing was a test. Like Logan was trying to slowly ween me off Logan and see whether I could actually catch fish in my own boat without him standing there whispering magical spoon instructions. To his credit, he did send over his opening lineup plan. And luckily I owned a decent amount of the spoons.

So off the six of us went. Moods were tense. There’s a lot of pressure after boating 65 fish in two days. And let’s just say the bite was absolutely NOT on this morning.

Couple fish here. Couple fish there. Few minis. Another mini. One medium fish…Blah blah blah.

Frankly pretty boring after the complete insanity of the previous two days. We turned around and headed north. Same thing…Blah blah blah…Lots of downtime.
BoatMeal™ was excellent. Lots of lure changes. The old usual. We got north of the projects and seriously considered pulling lines and calling it a day. Counted the fish…Sixteen…Hmm. 16 for 18? That’s actually pretty damn good by normal standards.

But normal standards have officially left the building this weekend. At some point we all collectively agreed the divers sucked. The riggers sucked. So we decided to start dragging some of Logan’s witchy lake trout stuff.

Holy hell…Turns out there were giant trout down there. How giant? Tim boated an absolute HAMMER…23.8 pounds. Legit dinosaur lake trout. The kind of fish that makes everybody stop talking for a minute.

Suddenly things got interesting again…We hit 27 fish. Then another rod fired..28…And now of course we had a problem…Because once you hit 28, you obviously have to stay for 30. That’s just basic fishing math. Then somehow we accidentally ended up dragging 31.

Final tally: 12 lake trout. 19 kings. Lots of minis. One mini released. 31 fish on 35 bites.

Memorial Day weekend grand total: 31 + 34 + 31 = 96 fish. 33 + 39 + 35 = 107 bites.

Almost needed a calculator for that nonsense.

Hot Bites:

Wonderbread lake trout special rig on low diver – 3 bites
Rainbow lake trout rig on low diver – 1 bite
Logan’s green/yellow spin-and-glow lake trout rig on high diver – 5 bites
Brown trout lake trout special rig on high diver – 3 bites
Spin Doctor Dragon Slayer with green krinkle fly on high diver – 1 bite
Red Tail meat rig on low diver – 1 bite
Moonshine green/blue Flounder mini half moon on free slider – 2 bites
New Yeck mag black/white/purple on out down hovering bottom – 1 bite
Stinger Charlie Special looking spoon on 5 color – 7 bites
Dreamweaver SS Hot Tamolie on 7 color – 1 bite
Yeck starburst looking thing on out down 40 down – 2 bites
Yeck Gold Fireball on 5 color – 3 bites
Yeck Fireball on 3 color – 2 bites
Mr. Chrome mini Wild Fire on 3 color – 2 bites
Stinger Brown Jelly Belly on 7 color – 1 bite

What I Learned Today:

Pretty sure Logan planned the whole sleepy thing specifically to test me. Feels like we kinda passed.
Fish cleaning record was officially set yesterday with 30 fish cleaned in 38 minutes. Today’s fish have not been cleaned yet. Will provide updates tomorrow if the results are worthy.
Staying out until 2pm absolutely kicked my ass. It’s currently 4:23pm and I still have fish to clean…Ugh.

Tomorrow wraps up the long weekend. Probably just a short quick troll.

For sure we have: Me. Surgeon Jenn. Tim.

Then maybe Euge, maybe Charlie Daniels, maybe Logan returns from his mysterious recharge mission.

We’ll be wrapping things up in the same zone. And at this point? I genuinely have no idea how this weekend got this ridiculous.

Ludington Fishing Report: 96 Fish Later and We’re Still Standing

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