Ludington Fishing Report: The Skunk Was Circling...Then All Hell Broke Loose
What an interesting week leading into today. Pain, happiness, weather anxiety, tournament strategy...all the things.
I was perfectly happy Monday thinking about Tuesday’s Soup Club meeting until I remembered I had a 6:00pm dentist appointment to have my temporary bridge popped off and the permanent one glued on. Sounds simple, right? Yep, it took over an hour. Yep, it hurt like a SOB. And yep, I refused to let him numb my mouth. I needed to feel the pain. How else am I supposed to learn to take better care of my teeth? Sometimes lessons need consequences, people.
Fortunately, the dental trauma was quickly offset when I was presented with my third official Pull Hard fishing thank-you card, this time from Jordan. As a reminder, the first came from Surgeon Jenn’s parents and the second from the Yavello CROs. Jordan hand-duplicated the Pull Hard logo pretty much perfectly, referred to me as “El Jefe” and said fishing with us was “one of the most fun things I have ever done.” Thanks, man! That totally trumped the dentist pain.
Then there’s the weather. The freaking weather. The weather is the one consistently annoying thing about Great Lakes salmon fishing. I have Habanero Harmon’s wife coming aboard for the first time, and his dad actually flying into Grand Rapids for the morning troll. We’ve got the crew. We’ve got the boat. We’ve got the hot sauce. We’ve got THE COIN.
Only one thing can possibly botch this plan...Mother Nature.
I’ve been blessed this year with the forecasts being wrong mostly in the right direction, but how long can that possibly continue? Monday’s forecast had Saturday at four-to-five-foot waves. No thanks. Now we’re down to 2.1-to-2.7-foot waves. I love how precise these things are. Not two-to-three feet. Nope. Apparently somebody knows we’re getting exactly 2.7-foot waves. The bigger concern was the wind. Eight mph southeast winds were supposed to switch overnight to 15 mph out of the northwest. That doesn’t exactly scream “beautiful relaxing morning troll” to me.
And then there’s today’s tournament! Logan is putting together a few $100 pop-up tournaments in August, and originally Logan was talking about fishing today’s tournament on my boat. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Logan AND the Lucky Ludington Fishing Coin on the same boat? That seems a little unfair. We realized that too and decided to split up the superpowers. Logan went fishing on another boat. And no, I was certainly not letting another boat take THE COIN. Sorry, Logan.
Friday’s mojo-building operation consisted of me scoring some bread and blueberries. I’m sticking with the whole fishing-deal-meets-drug-deal terminology here. You don’t “buy” blueberries anymore. You score blueberries.
I got the boat ready and waited for the crew to roll into Ludington. Surgeon Jenn wrapped up, well...surgeries...and headed north. Harmon and his wife picked up his dad in Grand Rapids, then stopped at Mitten BBQ Supplies to check on his inventory. Harmon is always working the hot sauce deals!
Then came the biggest Friday-night decision. No El Rancho. No El Lago. I know. For dinner we decided to try the Ludington Meat Company’s restaurant, the Ludington Smokehouse. I’d heard nothing but good things about it, and we recently saw that the entire operation is for sale. So naturally...why not go check the place out? I’m sure this will have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the fishing mojo. Right? And...they totally delivered. Everything was better than expected.
Fun fact: we saw Travis “Get Some” there also experiencing his first dining experience. Must’ve given us the exact same mojo because today we had the same-size big fish and finished only about a half-pound apart. Coincidence? Probably. Mojo? Definitely. Wait…”fun fact”? WTF?
So my new tournament big-wave crew was me, Surgeon Jenn, Habanero Harmon, Harmon’s wife Yan, and his dad Barry. I was forward-thinking enough to text Harmon yesterday and ask for Barry and Yan’s names so I could commit them to memory...just in case one of you decides to blow me into the RAP line again for running illegal charters. I was never really good with names, so I suppose I will not only take that last reporting as a compliment, I’ll thank you for helping me work on remembering names. Much appreciated! Look at me growing as a person.
Woke up at 3:30am. No run. No time for that. Left the condo at 4:30am and pulled away from the dock around 5:05am. Figured I’d give the tournament boats a little head start.
We went straight out and a tad south, setting up just east of the south straight-out tribal nets in about 70 FOW. It was great having Surgeon Jenn back. We had 15 lures in the water in record time and, yep...no bites. Just as planned.
Then, we had no bites. Followed up with...more no bites! I’m staring at the Lowrance watching fish follow our lures and still...no bites. I explained to the Harmons that this was totally normal and as soon as it got a little brighter we would have a full-blown ShitShow™.
We finally had a gap in the boats and turned more north, mainly because I wanted to change something. Still no bites. Oh, wait! Rigger going! Fish on! Fish off. Flukey broken line. Was a skunk starting to rear its ugly head?
Nope…Jut then, a genuine, by-the-book ShitShow™ occurred.
When it was all said and done, the ShitShow™ yielded 10 kings and one steelhead on 14 bites, along with a couple human chummers, five or six excellent tangles and a motherlode of high fives. Not exactly how I would’ve scripted the morning, but now that it’s over, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Hot Bites
Prototype 8 Inch Chrome / Howie Green Crinkle | High Diver 120 back | 3 bites
Bechold 11 Inch Kevin’s Girlfriend / Rapture Sweet Pea | Chute Rigger 74 down | 1 bite
Prototype 8 Inch / Dreamweaver Little Boy Blue | Low Diver 90 back | 1 bite
Dreamweaver Spin Doctor 8 Inch / ITO Isotope | High Diver 125 back | 1 bite
Dreamweaver Spin Doctor 10 Inch / ITO White RV | Low Diver 100 back | 1 bite
Mr. Chrome Standard Papageorgio | Out Down 65 down | 1 bite
Moonshine Standard Halfmoon Green Knight | Out Down 52 down | 1 bite
Moonshine Mini Non Glow Green Slice | Slider 52 down | 1 bite
Moonshine 5 Inch Mongolian Beef | Lead Core 5 Colors | 1 bite
Moonshine 4 Inch Green Silver Ladder | Lead Core 7 Colors | 1 bite
Dreamweaver 4 Inch Soda | Lead Core 5 Colors | 1 bite
Dreamweaver 4 Inch Red Head Black Dot | Lead Core 10 Colors | 1 bite
What I Learned Today
Some couples can pull off the matching Crocs thing. I’m personally not getting involved in that, but the Harmons nailed it. Cute!
Everyone seemed to genuinely like the pop-up tournament. I wasn’t exactly excited about hanging around the weigh-in for two hours, but it all worked out. Lots of smiling faces, lots of good fish and some pretty impressive boxes put together in crappy weather. Thanks, Logan, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. Looking forward to next Saturday!
I learned that Habanero Harmon’s grandpa, “Eli, the son-of-a-bitch,” who was with us when someone called the RAP line on me, isn’t really named Eli. Like...not even close. I’m so confused. Why would he go by an alias? Does this technically mean I lied to the DNR when they asked me his name? This makes absolutely no sense, and I’ve decided I just need to accept it and move on.
Saw Todd Jackpot at Chuck’s yesterday. Gotta love when the opening handshake ends with just a slight pull...which turns into him pulling me toward the Spin Doctor wall, handing me a flasher, then taking me over to the fly aisle for teasers so I can build this awesome meat rig that was slated to get bit approximately 18-to-20 times today. It didn’t. But still...people helping people.
Yan seemed to embrace pretty much all of our silly-but-serious Pull Hard stuff. She caught her first hog, ducked her first Jeep and woofed down her first BoatMeal™. She laughed and smiled almost the entire time, which I’m taking as a successful first Pull Hard experience.
Barry seemed a little overwhelmed by just how awesome Ludington is and apparently impressed with how in sync Surgeon Jenn and I are running the back of the boat and cleaning fish. Probably everything else too, but those are the things he actually mentioned. We appreciate you, Barry!
And once again, the weigh-in humbled us. Even these little local tournaments have some seriously good fishermen. I did like seeing 13 of the 14 boats weigh fish. Maybe one day we can be as good as Reel World, Jackpot and Bruise Time and actually bring home some bacon. We clearly need to work harder Jenn! Or...put Logan and THE COIN back together.
Tomorrow’s weather is supposed to be really bad, so I’m looking forward to a day off. Hah! Saying that like fishing is my job. It should free up some time for cleaning, organizing and doing all the crap that gets ignored when the fish are biting.
The way I see it, I’ve got next weekend and then Labor Day weekend to find that Big King Bonanza hammer.
Next weekend brings another special guest, Tim McKennie and his fishy son. Tim is another Milford High School Class of 1987 dude and, more importantly, one of the three founding members of the Scorpions, our high school drinking gang. Yeah. We were apparently very sophisticated.
And finally, Yan and Barry officially became numbers 68 and 69 on my 2026 fishing buddy list. Yes, I have a spreadsheet. What kind of operation do you think I’m running here? Looking forward to cracking 70 next weekend.
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