Ludington Fishing Report – The Hat Conspiracy, Bottom Crud?, and 8 Beers is NOT Enough NICK!

5/31/20253 min read

Today’s fishing trip wasn’t just a quest for trout and salmon. Oh no. It was a deep, meaningful investigation into the mysterious power of… hats. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but I’m onto something. Hat-based fishing energy is real, and it’s weird.

So, crew check: Myself, Uncle David, Nick, and Alison kicked things off right with a picture-perfect dinner at Jamesport Brewery the night before. Then Tim and Chad rolled in from Hartland, bringing us up to full capacity for our May 31st showdown with Lake Michigan – minus Alison – she’s going tomorrow.

I knew it was going to be chilly—like cold. My morning run confirmed it, along with 20mph winds out of the north. I rerouted my jog away from the water – so smart! When we got to the pier heads in the boat, I made the executive (and correct) decision to go shallow and south to chase lake trout where the waves wouldn’t beat us up too bad.

We set up in 70 FOW south of the Projects with a sweet spread:

3 riggers bouncing the bottom
4 wire divers ticking bottom
8 leadcore lines from 3 to 10 colors (yes, both 3 colors rocking the trusty Yeck Chubsters)

Lines set. Spirits high. Rods silent. Not a nibble. Fish marks? Barely any. I started having flashbacks to yesterday’s fish ghost town. Also, I was cold—like ice fishing-bib cold. And I never get cold. That's when the “Hat Stuff” started…

I went below and swapped out my baseball cap for a knit Pelagic hat. As soon—literally the moment—it touched my head, the 10-color leadcore popped. Boom! First lake trout of the day. Tim reeled it in like a champ.

Someone made a joke about the hat. Then we realized: Tim and Nick both had Captain Chuck’s II hats on. Now, for context—Nick never deviates from his Chicago Bears hat. It’s like his crown. Tim’s more of a wild card. But today, they were matching Chuck’s... and fish started hitting.

Halfway through, one of the bottom divers went silent. Usually, that means either A) a lazy lake trout is hitching a ride under protest or B) the lure's dragging random bottom goo. I tripped it, Chad grabbed the rod, the fight was on!

As the dipsy neared the boat, I saw... a hat. Not a fish. A crusty, zebra-mussel-encrusted, ancient hat from the lakebed. No logo. No dignity. Just one sad, soggy bill and some threads clinging to the dream. Chad had officially caught the legendary Hat of the Deep. At this point, I'm 90% sure Lake Michigan is trying to communicate.

Anyway, we kept trolling south, eventually swung past Bass Lake and then reset for a second pass. The waves started getting nasty, and trolling north just wasn’t happening, so we wrapped it up.

Final Count:

2 mini kings
1 steelhead
8 lake trout
3 lakers lost at the back of the boat
1 haunted hat retrieved from Lake Michigan’s Lost & Found

Hot Lures:

Yeck Chubster on 3-color: 5 of our 14 bites. MVP again…WTF is up with this thing!
Moonshine RV Bloodynose on 10-color: 2 bites, strong showing.
Wire mag divers with chrome spin doctors + spin-n-glos/whirly gigs: 7 bites – straight workhorses.

What I Learned Today:

XM stations didn’t seem to matter—today’s bites happened with no music, Classic Vinyl, Lithium, and Red, White & Booze. That last one may or may not summon lake trout patriotism.
Tim hates long dipsy leads as much as I do, especially when he does his “extra hookset of justice” move when handling and launches the hook out of the fish's mouth.
Chad claims he’s great at golf. But after watching him try to “tap” a fish in the head with the bat and miss by three feet, I have severe doubts.
Tim diagnosed yesterday’s slump: “Wait, Nick only had 8 beers in 6 hours? Dude. That’s your problem. No wonder you didn’t catch shit!”

So we’re wrapping up the day. Chad’s currently eyeballing the dry erase board in the condo where we list all the non-fishing cool stuff we do in Ludington. Sounds like the next adventure is “ducking.” (That’s either a typo or a very suspicious euphemism—maybe I’ll report back.) In the meantime, respect the hat!