Buggs Island Lake

 

 

 

Spring Trip 2008 (3/29-4/5)

 

 

Buggs Island Lake has 850 miles of shoreline that stretches from northern North Carolina to southern Virginia.  Buggs Island covers about 50,000 acres and has more creek arms than you could shake a shaky head worm at.  Buggs Island Lake is full of flooded bushes, lay down trees, and rock piles that bass take cover in.  There are also numerous floating docks for largemouth bass to hide under.  The water was very clear in the upper end of the lake and a little stained in the southern creek arms. The average size bass that are caught in Buggs Island Lake are between 2-3 pounds with females that can tip the scale at 8 pounds.  One report I read on the Internet told me that Buggs Island is the number one lake in North Carolina to catch multiple 4 pound bass.

 

3-29-2008:  We arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina at 9:00 am where my old fishing partner Rich Charleston was waiting to greet my wife and me.  He drove us to his fiancée Carrie’s house in Franklinton, NC.  We dropped off our bags and got a quick bite to eat.  It was pouring down rain while we were eating lunch and it made me think. 

 

I thought to myself, “Isn’t North Carolina in the middle of a severe drought?”

 

North Carolina was in such a drought there were strict water restrictions that the residents had to follow.  One restriction didn’t allow people to water their lawn or wash their cars on odd days.  If a resident was caught doing so they would be ticketed.  Good thing Kelly and I brought a bunch of rain with us from Michigan.

 

Rich thought the rain was going to stop so we packed our Gore Tex and headed for Buggs Island Lake.  We launched Rich’s 21 ft Stratos out of Satterwhite Point Park and Marina at 12:00 pm.  The marina was in a secondary creek arm that branched off of Nutbush Creek.  We motored around and started fishing secondary points by Bullocksville Park.  The water was only 52 degrees and it was slightly stained.  Oh yeah, and it was still raining!  Rich caught our first bass on an Excalibur Rattle bait in 6 ft of water on a sandy point.  Although it was only a small keeper it got me pumped up.  We decided to fish the point again but with slower presentations.  I fished a Flick Shake (Nickname; Inch Worm) tied on 6 pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon.  I made a cast to the drop-off and let it settle to the bottom, twitched it once, and a fish gobbled it up.  I ended up catching three small keepers in four or five casts.  Rich also caught one more bass with his rattle bait off the same point giving us a quick limit.  An hour passed and it was still raining like it did during Noah’s flood so we packed everything up and headed home. 

 

I think one key to fishing points in the spring on huge reservoirs is covering water with reaction baits until it gets bitten.  Once the bass are located, then fish the area slowly with jigs, worms, and lizards.  It’s easy to waist a bunch of time because there are so many points that don’t have any fish on them.

 

 

4-1-2008:  Well it hasn’t stopped raining yet and the news man said, “If it rains like this for two more days the drought will be over.”  Great!!!  I’m glad that the week I could come down and fish included rains that will eventually fill the reservoirs back to normal pool.  Thankfully the rains tapered off at about 11:00 am so we made the 30 minute drive to the boat ramp at Satterwhite Marina.  Little did I expect we were about to have the greatest fishing day of our lives!

 

All of the rain must have woken up the biggest bass in the lake because we caught three bass over 10 pounds and two over 12 pounds!!!!  54 pounds of bass that ate our swim baits!!!  April Fools!!! 

 

Actually we had our worst day of the entire trip.  We only boated three keeper bass and it took us five grueling hours to do it.  It was a much nicer day with temperatures in the 70’s and bluebird skies.  We burned secondary points without any luck for most of the day.  We were trying to find a school of bass like we did yesterday.  Without any action we decided to check the backs of the creek arms.  We were able to catch three keeper bass with jigs that we would flip into the branches of downed trees.  It was a pretty disappointing day of fishing but I was able to sunburn my face.

 

4-2-2008:  What a beautiful day it was today!  We had clear skies and temperatures in the upper 70’s today.  I talked Rich into launching form County Line Park which is in a creek arm that is located near the Virginia boarder.  The water was so much clearer there it made me feel like I was at home.  We started fishing a main lake point with shaky head worms at about 11:00 am.  We decided to fish this point because the graph lit up with fish arcs and pods of bait fish when we idled by it.  On Rich’s very first cast of the morning he set the hook on a 2.5 pound largehead.  I thought we were on them but that ended up being the only fish we caught from the point. 

 

The rest of the day we chose to flip and pitch jigs with Peca Craw trailers in the back of creek arms.  The water temperature was 60 degrees in the back of most of the creek arms we fished.  The bass were absolutely munching our jigs.  I would pitch my jig into the branches of a lay down and hold on.  Thank goodness I was using 20 lb Gamma Edge to rip the bass out of the trees.  We would catch three or four bass out of each creek arm.  They were positioned in the tops of select trees.  We also caught a couple bass off cement slabs that locals tie their docks down to.

 

There was one creek arm located in Virginian water that looked like we were fishing in a Mississippi swamp.  We had to cast over two huge trees laying across the water and into flooded bushes.  We would get a bite and have to rip them out of the bushes and over the huge trees.  We caught five keeper bass from the back of this crazy creek arm.  Rich and I ended up catching thirteen bass that weighed about 11 pounds on the day.

 

4-3-2008:  Rain Out L  The drought is officially over in northern North Carolina. J

 

4-4-2008:  Today was the best day Rich and I had the whole week even though the air temperature didn’t get above 50 degrees.  We woke up early and got on the water by 8:00 am.  We launched form County Line Ramp but fished different creek arms than we did on Tuesday. We concentrated on creek arms that were on the west side of Nutbush Creek.  While we were motoring towards the back of a creek arm we noticed a bush on Rich’s Lowrance in about 20 foot of water.  Rich fished the bush with a shaky head and I dropped my jig into it.  Once my bait made contact with the bush a fat 3 pound bass inhaled it.  We fished the bush for 30 more minutes but we didn’t get anymore bites. 

 

The rest of the day we continued flipping bushes and lay downs in the back of creek arms.  Rich was on fire with his flippin stick today, catching bass left and right.  Rich caught a handful of 2 pounders out of each cove while I struggled to get a bite.  In one cove he caught three keeper bass off of one tree.  He also caught the biggest bass of our trip which was a 4 pound bucketmouth.  Rich caught at least twelve keeper bass.  On the other hand I wasn’t getting many bites and when I did get a bite I would miss it.  I only caught five keepers the entire day.  We ended up having five bass that would have weighed 14 pounds today which was our best weight of the week.  All in all I really enjoyed fishing Buggs Island and I can’t wait to get back there.