The Path Not Taken
On the last day of practice at St.
Clair, Rose and fellow Arkansas pro
Greg Bohannan located an area that
was swarming with fish in the 3-
pounds-plus range, and a few that
topped 4 pounds. Rose also had found
a spot offshore where the fish he
caught were bigger, but more random.
Given that there wasn’t much wiggle
room between him and two of the
most formidable competitors in the
FLW Tour ranks – Martin and Thrift –
Rose opted to plan his tournament
around the surer thing.
“
“Based on past tournament statis-
tics, I felt like I could catch 17 or 18
pounds a day and do what I needed to
do,” recalls Rose, a slugging center field-
er for Arkansas State University in his
college days. “Fast-forward; if I had
known it was going to be a homerun
derby I would have dug in a little deeper
in the box. I wouldn’t have choked up on
the bat at all. I would have just been me
and swung a little harder, which is what
I usually do. It almost cost me, but it did-
n’t. I lost a few key fish – one 4-pounder
broke off, and another just pulled off
I WOULDN’T HAVE
CHOKED UP ON THE BAT
AT ALL. I WOULD HAVE
JUST BEEN ME AND
SWUNG A LITTLE HARDER.
”
— MARK RosE
56
right at the boat. If I had caught them, it
wouldn’t have been so close.”
Until now, St. Clair provided equal
measures of insult and injury to Rose’s
resume. In 1999, his third-place finish
in a Tour event on the Mississippi River
convinced him that he was ready to
turn pro and make the big bucks.
Subsequently he quit his day job as a
district executive for the Chickasaw
Council of the Boy Scouts in Memphis
and prepared for the life of a tourna-
ment angler. A month later, a 147th-
place finish at Lake St. Clair disabused
him of the notion that he was on a
meteoric rise to fame and fortune.
Such results have not defined
Rose’s 20 years as an FLW Tour pro.
Seven top-10 seasons bespeak his con-
sistency. Monetarily, 2018 marked the
third time Rose has cashed checks
totaling more than $200,000. The AOY
championship earned him $100,000,
he’ll earn a new boat through the
Ranger Cup program and the Forrest
Wood Cup is still to come. He’s collect-
ed nearly $2 1/2 million overall in his
career and, at 46, should have several
productive years ahead of him.
FLWFISHING.COM I AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2018