MECKLENBURG COUNTY, Va. — Ayden Rigsbee has been humbled by Buggs Island Reservoir more times than he can count, but he and Triangle Bass Club partner Nolan Clark exacted revenge on Rigsbee’s home lake by winning the Strike King Bassmaster High School Series at Buggs Island title with a five-bass limit weighing 16 pounds, 13 ounces.
“Winning this tournament feels awesome. This place can be really rough at times and treat you terribly,” Rigsbee, a freshman, said. “It feels good to finally pull something off on your home lake.”
Triangle Bass Club anglers Kieran Stephenson and Grady Stanley and McDowell High School’s Jackson Dowdle and Mason Brewer tied for second place with 16-12. Oldham County High School’s Olevir Johnson and Rhett Shirrell finished fourth with 15-8 and Lucas Crutchfield from Mecklenburg County Youth Bassmasters finished fifth with 15-4.
This was the first Bassmaster event Clark and Rigsbee had ever fished together. With the win, they punched their ticket to the Strike King Bassmaster High School National Championship at Clarks Hill this July.
“I never in a million years thought I would win one of these,” Clark, a sophomore from the Jordan Lake region of North Carolina, said. “We tried our best and everything just worked out.”
Rain and storms greeted the field of 145 boats Sunday morning, but the teams were able to battle the elements to land 75 limits and over 1,020 pounds of bass for the day.
Rigsbee and Clark fished in Nutbush Creek on the lake’s southeast side. When the bridge they started on only produced one keeper bass, the duo pivoted to thick stumps and tree roots in the back of the creek that postspawn largemouth were holding on. Rock and riprap also came into play.
Falling water and the early morning storms, Rigsbee said, positioned the bass on cover off of the bank.
“We found them really shallow in practice, but we thought the thunder and lightning might have pushed them off some,” he explained. “The water dropped overnight, and the low water pulled them out even further.”
Rigsbee and Clark kept their front graphs off all day long and used several shallow techniques to claim the title. A buzzbait produced several quality bites when the rain was falling while a jig was better in just overcast conditions.
“I throw a buzzbait everywhere I go,” Clark said. “As soon as the rain picked up, I knew I needed to pick up the buzzbait, and every single time I caught one. When it wasn’t raining, I would flip a jig into the outside trees, and they would suck it in and hold onto it.”
To start the morning, the duo fished the bridge for over an hour without a bite. That’s when Rigsbee and Clark moved to the very back of Nutbush and began working their way back out.
“We knew something had to change if we wanted to win this,” Rigsbee said. “We made a couple of adjustments and started playing the wind a little more. The bites kept getting bigger and bigger.”
With around 13 pounds in the livewell late in the afternoon, the duo moved back out to the bridge and landed a quality keeper on a weightless fluke and then their biggest bass of the day, a 5-pounder, on a Pirate Baits balsa crankbait with just a few minutes left in their fishing day.
“It was the last cast we made. I threw it to the bridge corner, cranked it three times and felt like I got stuck,” Clark explained. “I held it there for a second, and my line went the other way. It was complete chaos for about two minutes. We weren’t sure if we were going to win, but we knew we had a chance then.”
Stephenson and Stanley landed the Big Bass of the Day, a 6-2 largemouth that anchored their second-place bag.
Mecklenburg County, Virginia hosted the tournament.