Mark Rose makes history with back-to-back FLW Tour wins
Has anyone had a better start to the 2017 season than Mark Rose? In only his second year running Garmin marine electronics, Rose, a seasoned FLW Tour pro, hit the ground running by winning at Lake Guntersville less than three weeks ago, and again this past weekend at Lake Travis. Rose has made his mark in the history books by becoming the first person to ever win back-to-back FLW Tour events.
We caught up with Mark after his win at Lake Travis to get the scoop on how he won and what’s next…
Garmin: Mark, congratulations on the win! It has to feel great starting the 2017 season off with two wins, but you have some very skilled anglers hot on your trail in the AOY race. What are you doing to prepare for Harris Chain and the rest of the season?
Mark Rose: Honestly, I’m not doing much of anything to prepare. I’m just taking it one tournament at a time and don’t really pre-practice this time of year. The only time I will do that is on the Tennessee River and other ledge fishing lakes. I’m just going to show up at Harris, put in my three days of practice and hope for the best!
Right now, I’m just going to enjoy the moment and soak it in. Nobody realizes how hard it is to win back-to-back Tour level events any more than I do. I’ve been doing this 17 years and have six Tour level wins to my name and two of them came back-to-back. There have been a lot of ‘not-wins’ during that time, so I’m just overwhelmed with everything right now and am just going to ride the highs, because there are always going to be some lows and in-betweens. That’s what you have to do in this sport.
G: How did your Garmin units help you at Lake Travis last weekend?
MR: Three features of my Garmin units stand out as playing a huge role in my success at Lake Travis.
ClearVü sonar was crucial for me this week. These fish on Lake Travis show up like Tennessee River fish and show themselves really well on the screen. I was doing a lot of idling and finding groups of fish on hard structure, such as stair-stepping ledges that lead into spawning bays.
The other thing was Garmin’s CHIRP traditional sonar. It was unbelievably clear! I was catching fish in 49-60 feet of water and to have that amount of clarity on my traditional sonar was extremely helpful.
Lastly, the LakeVü HD Ultra mapping was great! Lake Travis is one of the new MaxDef lakes that will be released soon, so it was nice to get my hands on that early in time for the tournament.
G: What baits did you catch your fish on this week?
MR: I caught most of my fish on a Strike King Football Jig (3/4 oz. and 1 oz., depending on how deep I was fishing), and then I’d throw a Strike King Rage Bug around docks. I caught a few big ones the last several days on a swimbait as well.
Rose fished the final day with fellow Garmin pros Clark Wendlandt (5th) and Anthony Gagliardi (6th) in the top 10.
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