{"id":414,"date":"2025-05-02T01:30:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T01:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/?p=414"},"modified":"2025-05-02T01:30:29","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T01:30:29","slug":"big-bag-lifts-marco-and-rowlands-to-victory-at-buggs-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/big-bag-lifts-marco-and-rowlands-to-victory-at-buggs-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Big bag lifts Marco and Rowlands to victory at Buggs Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 1, 2025<\/span><\/p>\n

MECKLENBURG COUNTY, Va. \u2014 Often, tournaments are won by anglers fishing within their comfort zone. That wasn\u2019t necessarily the case for the King University duo of Trey Marco and Jake Rowlands at the Strike King Bassmaster College Series presented by Bass Pro Shops at Buggs Island.<\/p>\n

Using two baits they\u2019ve hardly thrown, Marco and Rowlands won their first College Series event with a two-day total weighing 38 pounds, 9 ounces. The Pennsylvania natives opened the tournament in a tie for eighth place with a limit weighing 17-1 before securing a tournament-best 21-8 on the final day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a while since I\u2019ve won a bigger tournament,\u201d Marco said. \u201cThis has been a long time coming. We put a lot of hard work into this, and it feels good to be rewarded for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While neither of them had been to Buggs Island as boaters, Marco fished an event on the massive Roanoke River reservoir as a co-angler a few years prior.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fished the lake twice as a co-angler four years ago, and that was the year I really started bass fishing,\u201d Marco said. \u201cIt feels good to come back here and see all of the progress I\u2019ve made over the past few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emmanuel University\u2019s Will Wester and Jackson Thomas finished second with a two-day mark of 36-3 while Day 1 leaders Easton Drennon and Chase McCarter from Carson-Newman University fell to third with a total of 34-14.<\/p>\n

Marco, a sophomore, and the freshman Rowlands teamed up at the start of the school year but were disappointed with their results during the fall season. The duo worked hard to improve over the winter and spring, with preparation being an important piece of the puzzle. They spent several days on Buggs Island before the off-limits period scanning offshore areas looking for brushpiles.<\/p>\n

When tournament week rolled around, they discovered that brush would not be the key piece of cover and shifted their focus to stumps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought shallow brushpiles would be good for postspawners,\u201d Rowlands said. \u201cWe ended up finding that the brushpiles were not what they were on, it was stumps. But luckily when you found brushpiles, there were also stumps around.\u201d<\/p>\n

The majority of their productive stumps were in 12 feet of water or less, but on the final day they moved deeper and targeted smaller stumps. Most of these targets had two or three bass holding to them, and at times Marco said they had to weed through the smaller fish to get to the quality largemouth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was hard to find an area by yourself. Our biggest key was finding an area that we had to ourselves. We didn\u2019t see another boat the entire tournament. We pretty much made a circle around a three-mile area. We had 50 to 70 stumps marked. It seemed like the bites came in flurries.\u201d<\/p>\n

To trigger their bites, the duo threw a \u00be-ounce bucktail jig as well as a Megabass Kanata Jerkbait, neither of which have been used much by Rowlands and Marco in the past. In fact, Rowlands received the jerkbait as a Christmas gift this past December and bought another one after Brandon Palaniuk won the Champion Power Equipment Bassmaster Elite at Lake Okeechobee in February. There was only one bucktail jig in the boat, and the hook was admittedly a little rusty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really feel like no one was throwing them and these fish haven\u2019t seen them,\u201d Rowland said.<\/p>\n

After not catching a single keeper to start Day 1 around a shad spawn, Marco and Rowland headed straight to their primary area on the final day. The duo picked up 11 pounds by 11 a.m., but within a 15-minute flurry, the duo upgraded to over 19 pounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those things that just seemed meant to be,\u201d Marco said. \u201cThe bite you normally don\u2019t get, for whatever reason we got. It was a very short period of time, and we expanded on it a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

At around 1 p.m., the duo landed their final 4-pounder to put them over the 20-pound mark. While Marco felt good about their chances to win when they landed that bass, Rowlands thought they needed another kicker bite.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrey was saying the whole time that we had a shot at the win if we got to 21,\u201d Rowlands said. \u201cAnd I was saying we needed more. He was right.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the win, Marco and Rowlands qualified for their first Bassmaster College National Championship, which will be held just south of King University on Cherokee Lake in July.<\/p>\n

Wester and Thomas utilized a similar gameplan to catch their 18-9 and 17-10 limits. They anchored their final day bag with a 5-4 largemouth. The duo dedicated their top finish to head coach Pam Martin-Wells, who passed away in April from cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt great being able to do this for her,\u201d Wester said.<\/p>\n

The week started with a blown motor, but in the process of trolling back to the ramp, the Emmanuel duo discovered the bass in the area were hovering around brushpiles.<\/p>\n

With a new boat brought up from Georgia, they expanded on their pattern before making the transition to stumps in 6 to 8 feet of water, although they did catch a quality keeper off a stump in 30 feet of water. A \u215c-ounce brown and purple jig produced the majority of their stump bites while a 5\/16-ounce Buckeye Lures G-Stroll jighead paired with a Strike King Z-Too minnow was better around the brush, especially if the bass were floating above the brush.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur better bites came around midday with the jig,\u201d Wester, a sophomore, said.<\/p>\n

With a limit of 10 pounds to start the day, Wester and Thomas slowly culled up throughout the day. Their kicker bite came around mid-morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 10 o\u2019clock we had 13 pounds, and I leaned into that 5-4, which helped big time,\u201d Thomas, a freshman, said. \u201cWe had our weight by 1 and we kept catching 2-pounders from then on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wester and Thomas split Big Bass of the Tournament honors with the Erskine College duo of Rylan Green and Luke McGuffin, who also landed a 5-4 on the final day of competition.<\/p>\n

The Top 20 teams qualified for the aforementioned Strike King Bassmaster College National Championship presented by Bass Pro Shops at Cherokee Lake scheduled for July 10-12. All teams earned points towards the Lunkers Trail points race. The Lunkers Trail will conclude at Chickamauga Lake May 30-31.<\/p>\n

Mecklenburg County, Virginia, hosted the tournament.<\/p>\n

2025 Bassmaster College Series Title Sponsor: Strike King<\/p>\n

2025 Bassmaster College Series Presenting Sponsor: Bass Pro Shops<\/p>\n

2025 Bassmaster College Series Platinum Sponsor: Progressive, Toyota<\/p>\n

2025 Bassmaster College Series Premier Sponsors: Dakota Lithium, Humminbird, Mercury, Minn Kota, Nitro Boats, Power-Pole, Ranger Boats, Rapala, Skeeter Boats, Yamaha<\/p>\n

2025 Bassmaster College Series Supporting Sponsors: AFTCO, Daiwa, Garmin, Lew’s, Lowrance, Triton Boats, VMC, Yokohama<\/p>\n

2025 Bassmaster College Series Youth Sponsors: Seaguar, Shimano<\/p>\n

About B.A.S.S.<\/p>\n

B.A.S.S., which encompasses the Bassmaster tournament leagues, events and media platforms, is the worldwide authority on bass fishing and keeper of the culture of the sport, providing cutting-edge content on bass fishing whenever, wherever and however bass fishing fans want to use it. Headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., the organization\u2019s fully integrated media platforms include the industry\u2019s leading magazines (Bassmaster and B.A.S.S. Times), website (Bassmaster.com), TV show, radio show, social media programs and events. For more than 50 years, B.A.S.S. has been dedicated to access, conservation and youth fishing.<\/p>\n

The Bassmaster Tournament Trail includes the most prestigious events at each level of competition, including the Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series, St. Croix Bassmaster Opens Series presented by SEVIIN, Mercury B.A.S.S. Nation Qualifier Series presented by Lowrance, Strike King Bassmaster College Series presented by Bass Pro Shops, Strike King Bassmaster High School Series, Bassmaster Junior Series, Bassmaster Team Championship, Newport Bassmaster Kayak Series presented by Native Watercraft, Bassmaster College Kayak Series, Yamaha Bassmaster Redfish Cup Championship presented by Skeeter and the ultimate celebration of competitive fishing, the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour.<\/p>\n

Connect with #Bassmaster on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of BASS, LLC.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 1, 2025 MECKLENBURG COUNTY, Va. \u2014 Often, tournaments are won by anglers fishing within their comfort zone. That wasn\u2019t necessarily the case for the King University duo of Trey Marco and Jake Rowlands at the Strike King Bassmaster College Series presented by Bass Pro Shops at Buggs Island. Using two baits they\u2019ve hardly thrown, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/college-bugsisland-25.jpg?fit=1440%2C960&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebasshog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}