SUMMERSVILLE, W.Va. — The West Virginia Bass Nation organization hosts its high school fishing series to help introduce and educate young anglers on bass fishing and get them ready for adult completion. However, this year, it was a high school angler who took the whole organization to school.
At age 17, Luke Stewart became the youngest West Virginia Bass Nation State Champion when he won the state tournament on Summersville Lake. The Clay County High School Senior brought a two-day total weight of 16.60 pounds to the scales. His weekend stringer beat the second place finisher by more than three pounds.
“My biggest strategy was to fish deep with a drop shot and trying to get as many bites as possible. I didn’t have a great practice, but I heard people were catching them on a drop shot,” he said.
Luke said he managed to scratch out a limit of fish with the deep pattern and although he had figured out a few things by the end of the first day, he still didn’t have a lot of confidence he would be able to win on what he was finding. So on day two, he made a decision to move.
“I went shallow and I found out really quick, within three casts, the fish had gone shallow,” he explained.
The third cast he hooked one of his best smallmouth bass of the tournament. That fish helped him decide how he was going to play it for the duration of the tournament. He didn’t go into it with blind luck however, he’s fished Summersville Lake most of his life and knows the water better than a lot of seasoned anglers.
“I figured if I could go early at least to get a nice limit of largemouth out of some brush, then I could go deep and get some smallmouth. But then on the third cast I caught that big smallmouth and I figured they went shallow and I would do this all day,” he explained.
Typically the fall pattern at Summersville is to drag something deep, so his change seemed unusual to most, but not to Luke.
“Nobody was doing what I was doing. I was going across points and around boats and catching them, everybody was out fishing in the channel,” he said.
Stewart explained through time he’s learned the fish in those deep channels get a lot of pressure at this time of year. The fish moving up shallow don’t face nearly as much, and those were the fish he managed to fine on day two to win the tournament.
The win automatically qualified him to fish the BASS Nation National Championship. The location of the coming year’s championship event is yet to be revealed. But despite his age, he’s no stranger to the big stage. Luke is a past winner of the state high school championship on multiple occasions and has previously fished the high school national championships several times. His best finish there was 10th.
When asked about his success at such a young age, about all he could muster was a sheepish grin and a declaration, “…it’s pretty cool.” He laughed.