Rose Wins Going Wire-To-Wire At Walmart FLW Tour On Wheeler Lake

Wheeler Lake champion Mark Rose lifts his hands and head
to heaven for a moment of thanks. (Photo by David A. Brown)

courtesy

23.Sep.2012

DECATUR, Ala. – National Guard pro Mark Rose again brought the largest stringer to the scales Sunday – for the third time in four days – to win the Walmart FLW Tour Open on Wheeler Lake presented by Ranger Boats. Rose weighed in a five-bass limit worth 16 pounds, 14 ounces to win the $125,000 prize after leading wire-to-wire, besting the bass-fishing pros from all across the United States.

The West Memphis, Ark., native weighed in 20 bass totaling 71 pounds, 6 ounces during four days of fishing competition. Chevy pro Luke Clausen of Spokane, Wash., weighed in five bass Sunday totaling 11 pounds, 13 ounces to leapfrog pro Blake Nick and finish in second place.

“I’ve been mad at these fish ever since I didn’t make the Forrest Wood Cup,” said Rose, who now has over $1.6 million dollars in career winnings with FLW. “That’s the Superbowl of our sport, and I want to be there every time. It was really tough for me to have to miss, so this is just a good cap for me on a tough year.”

Rose dominated the event by targeting mussel beds using a crankbait and a Texas-rigged worm. He also credited a green pumpkin-colored Strike King Football jig as catching the key fish for him Sunday, but said the crankbait was the key for him throughout this event.

“The fish were sitting in 21 to 23 feet of water, and it’s hard to get a lot of crankbaits down there,” Rose said. “I used a lot of different crankbaits this week. I’ve modified a few so I can really get down to those depths, and that was the key for me. The bigger fish wanted that crankbait more than anything else. When they weren’t eating my crankbait, I knew I could pick up my worm and really slow down and catch them. It took me some time to figure them out, but I eventually did.

“My key fish for me today came on the Football jig,” he continued. “I didn’t have any in the boat until I started throwing that. I also used a jigging spoon this week, because it can fire them up. It may sound weird, but I’m not always trying to catch one when I throw that spoon. I’ll use it to break them up and get them all fired up, and then I’ll ease my boat back and throw the crankbait. It’s like bed fishing, but 20 feet deep.”

Rose fished in two main areas throughout the tournament, around fifteen miles from the takeoff site. He was finally able to fish a third primary areas that he had located in practice on Sunday.

“I wasn’t able to get into one of my key areas the past couple of days because another guy had been fishing on it,” said Rose. “He had a really good tournament, but didn’t make the day four cut. I was finally able to fish there today and I caught three off of it.

“I made a conscious effort about four or five years ago to get offshore and I have to thank one of the best ledge fisherman in the country, Randy Haynes, for the time that he spent with me,” Rose went on to say. “He taught me a lot. I also want to thank the locals out on the lake today. There were a lot of people watching me, and they could have came out and hammered my areas. They left it alone for me, and I really appreciate them. First and foremost, though, I have to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He means everything to me, and I want to honor him with every moment of my career and my life. On my truck it reads, Faith, Family, Fishing. That’s what it’s all about.”

full article on FLWOutdoors.com

Mark Rose: Learning to Love the Offshore Bite

Article Courtesy PAA

June 4, 2012

By Pete Robbins

For a river rat like Mark Rose, raised fishing the shallow oxbows of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, offshore structure fishing was initially a conundrum that he could avoid.

“I made a living for about five or six years as an old bank beater,” he recalled, referring to his early days as a tour-level angler. “But in the four day events, by days three or four, the ten laydowns I was beating on wouldn’t pan out. Then I’d go home and watch the TV show and saw guys like David Fritts. What I worked for all day he’d catch in 15 minutes.”

As his schedule increasingly featured waterways where offshore specialists prevailed, Rose had no choice but to attack his weakness head-on. Fortunately, he only lives a couple of hours from the TVA chain of lakes, ground zero for that type of fishing in the summer. The results are overwhelming: In 2007 he won an FLW Series tournament on Pickwick; in 2010, he won an EverStart Series event there; and in 2011 he won an FLW Tour Major on that same body of water. Clearly he’d overcome any reluctance to fish deep water structure. In fact, he’d mastered it.

While Rose has refined certain tactics in recent years – for example, a big flutter spoon — he attributes his growth as an angler to many days spent without making a cast.

“I’ve spent hours and hour and hours on the TVA system, idling around, seeing what I was missing,” he explained. “I’m still not an expert. I don’t think we’ll ever completely master it, but at a time when my career was starting to get in the doldrums, this created a newfound passion.”

Unfortunately for some aspiring pros, understanding your electronics is not something that can be achieved at home or in a classroom. “There’s not a book you can read,” Rose explained. “It’s all about the amount of time looking at it. Until you see critters on your unit or how a ditch lays out, you’ll never understand what shadows and dark spots and other markings mean.”

He recommends that novices start off by looking where they know schools of fish exist, to learn how they’re represented in pixels. Once that’s done, “you can find new schools on your own,” he said. “That’s when you’ll really get excited.”

The addition of Structure Scan to his Lowrance products has made his time on the water even more efficient, but has required an additional learning process. He’s used the newer technology for three solid seasons and credits it with helping him catch fish he might have otherwise passed by.

“Down scan is easy to read, but with side scan you have to relearn your boundaries,” he said. The technology is particularly useful in water deeper than seven feet, but Rose noted that even on clear-cut shallow waters like the Potomac River he’s used it to find shipwrecks, stumps and irregularities in the grass.

Now that he’s fully embraced the electronics revolution, Rose has four – yes, count ‘em, FOUR – big Lowrance graphs on his Ranger. There are two HDS-10s on the front deck, and both an HDS-10 and HDS-8 at the console. That gives him the flexibility to devote each screen to one job – for example, he might have two-dimensional sonar on one front unit and the other completely devoted to mapping. In some cases, he’ll even put in two different map chips to see little subtleties that one or the other might leave out.

That level of electronic outfitting may not be practical for the average angler, but in any case, Rose advised anyone looking to maximize their catch to “get the best you can afford.” Simply put, what was state-of-the-art 10 or 12 years ago is light years behind today’s mid-level units. With each minor bump in price, you’ll typically get a substantial improvement in the size of the screen as well as the number and quality of the features provided.

“It’s like watching the Super Bowl,” he laughed. “Do you want to watch it on a 13-inch TV or do you want to watch it on a 60 inch big screen?”