Cody Huddleston and Nick Pahoundis are on what you would consider ‘a roll’. Huddleston and Pahoundis won the BASS Nation of West Virginia Buddy Trail on the Ohio River in Ravenswood over the weekend with a one day total of 11.29 pounds. Claiming a second victory in a row and defending the win from last year in Ravenswood. While the win looked great on paper, Huddleston and Pahoundis explained it wasn’t as pretty as it looked.

“I found a few spawning fish in practice still lingering around,” said Huddleston. “And unfortunately we had a terrible draw.”

But the bad draw wouldn’t deter the duo from having a positive outlook for the day. Instead they decided to make the run down to lock through as they did last year and test their luck around the areas they had won in 2022.

“We kinda figured with the bad draw there was going to be five or six boats in there where I found the spawning fish so we decided to go ahead and lock down. We wanted to spend two or three hours down there and try to get a limit.”

The duo would manage just three fish on their adventure down into the Racine pool and decided that their best opportunity to win was to lock back up and attempt to see if the spawning fish they had found were still there.

“To our surprise, we go in there where we found the spawning fish and they were still there spawning. We saw boats go right by them too which was the craziest thing. The three we found the day before were all still there and we caught all three of them.”

Those three fish helped the duo claim their second win on the season and now they have their sights set on the Team of the Year title which will be crowned at the Monongehala River in Fairmont during the BASS Nation of West Virginia Buddy Trail Championship.

“It’s a lot of pressure and it’s certainly one of the most challenging series to win,” said Huddleston. “I’m normally either really good on the Mon or really really bad. Just going to try to survive.”

But Huddleston and Pahoundis may need to do more than just surviving in the two day derby. They currently hold a 12 point lead over second place Chad Brinegar and Alan Fluharty who just claimed second in the Ravenswood tournament, not letting Huddleston and Pahoundis gap them in the points. Closely in third only 13 points back is the duo of Daniel Pearl and Daniel Post who are heading towards more of their home waters.

“Hopefully we can figure something out on the Mon, we have a love/hate relationship with that river,” said Pahoundis on social media.

Finishing in second place was the duo of Chad Brinegar and Alan Fluharty with 11.12 pounds.

Finishing third was the duo of Daniel Pearl and Daniel Post who had 9.52 pounds.

Tony Keller and John Cooper won Freedom Outdoors “Freedom Bucks”

49 teams competed. 

104 fish were weighed and 104 fish were released alive for a 100% live release rate.