Entry 224-1

Mark Rose Wins the FLW Pickwick Lake Tournament

Part 1: Having Good Feelings

Question: Mark, where was this tournament held?

Rose: It was held on Pickwick Lake October 10-13, 2007.

Question: Why did you think you had a chance to win at Pickwick?

Rose: My goal for the tournament was to finish in the top 30. I was about 48th in the points to qualify for the FLW Series East/West Championship. On this circuit, I didn’t have enough points to fish my year-end tournament. I knew I had to come in at least in the top 30 in the Pickwick tournament to finish in the top 30 on the circuit and have a chance to fish the end-of-the-season championship between the East and the West. I went to Pickwick Lake before the lake was made off-limits to get in some extra practice.

I fished Strike King’s new Tour Grade Football Jig with the new Rage Tail Craw and tried to drag it along the bottom as much as I could to learn what was on the bottom in different locations. I found four good schools of fish holding on mussel beds, realizing the Tennessee River was known for having sandbars and mussel beds. The main river ledges seemed to hold the bass most of the time. But I knew in the fall of the year, the bass would start moving toward the pockets and the coves, and would tend to move up on more-shallow bars, sometimes only 14- to 20-feet deep.

Question: Were you finding smallmouth or largemouth bass?

Rose: Primarily largemouth bass. But during the tournament, I weighed in two smallmouths. I felt really good about what I’d found before the cut-off date, and that I could place where I needed to place. Now, I never tell my wife how I think I’ll do in a tournament. But when I left home to fish at Pickwick, I just casually mentioned, “Well, I guess I’ll go win Pickwick this weekend,” as a kind of a joke. I didn’t know that I would win, but I felt I’d have a really-strong tournament.

Question: How many days of practice did you have before the tournament began?

Rose: We get four days of practice before the tournament. But I only practiced for three days because I went to church on that Sunday.

Question: What did you learn in practice?

Rose: I learned what depth the fish were holding in, and that the fish were holding on certain little sweet spots on about four mussel bars. I found that the mussel bars that had a lot of mussels on them were much-more productive than the mussel bars that didn’t have as many mussels on them. I learned where there were boulders that could serve as ambush points on the mussel bars and lined-up my boat with those boulders as waypoints on my GPS receiver. Then I’d get visual targets on the bank so that when I got my boat in position, I could cast at one particular tree on the bank, a bush or a stump. I knew the way my jig should come across the bottom to come through that sweet spot where the fish were feeding.

Question: How many waypoints did you have marked on your GPS for Pickwick before the tournament?

Rose: Before the tournament began, I had four main spots I wanted to fish marked as waypoints. But I also had a milk run in Yellow Creek where I thought I could catch some good-quality fish after I caught a limit on the mussel bars. However, the four key spots on the main lake where I’d fished the mussel bars were the four places I’d caught all my fish. I never had to fish Yellow Creek to finish out a limit.

 

Next: The First Day of the Tournament

Contents:

• Part 1: Having Good Feelings
• Part 2: The First Day of the Tournament
• Part 3: The Second Day of the Tournament
• Part 4: The Third Day of the Tournament
• Part 5: The Last Day of the Tournament