If there's ever a boom-or-bust month on the Tennessee River, it's definitely July. The Jekyll-Hyde bass might have lockjaw for 23 of 24 hours a day and not even a live shad parked on their nose would temp them. But when they decide to eat, it's lights-out for the next hour. And that eat switch

is almost always determined by current flow.

Nobody knows that better than Mark Rose, which is why he patiently waited. Over the final 2 days, when current was the lightest, he caught most of his weight in the final hour of fishing and completed his dominating, wire-to-wire victory at the Pickwick FLW Tour Major.

He won by more than 5 pounds and nobody was ever really close. Here's how he did it.

Practice

Rose knows Pickwick up and down. He lives 2 hours away in Marion, Ark., but grew up fishing the Mississippi (which is a shoreline, not a ledge fishery).

"About 4 years ago, maybe 4 1/2, I made it a point that I was going to really learn offshore fishing," Rose said. "I started really getting into my electronics. I have some good friends who live around Pickwick and I spent some time there with them when I was first starting to learn to use electronics and read ledges.

"Then once I got kind of clued in, man I fell in love with it – like a passion. Every time I'd be sitting around the house and didn't have anything going on, I'd go to Pickwick, crank up my Lowrance HDS-10 and figure out how to solve the puzzle."

He said he doesn't like being referred to as a ledgemaster, because he feels he's anything but. Still, his record speaks for itself.

"I do think I understand what's going on out there," he noted. "I understand how to read the fish on my graphs – the way they look when I see them, and what I need to throw to catch them. People think it's a magic lure or something, but it's a combo of a lot of different lures. You learn to kind of read the fish and use the baits accordingly."

With such a dense knowledge base, Rose had plenty to explore when he launched for the official Pickwick practice. He and his partner won the PAA Corporate Cup there a few years back, and he checked that winning spot right away. The fish weren't there, so he poked around the area and finally, when he got into 25 feet of water, he found them.

"They were deeper and I knew they were fresh. It was an old waypoint, and I'd been fishing it since that PAA tournament, but I hadn't been on it at all this year. It was loaded though, so I felt it was a fresh school and I felt like it could last for several days. Although I didn't know the total quality that turned out to be there."

He also found one other "subtle" place and had a limit spot that was good for 10 or 11 pounds.

Winning Pattern Notes

> Day 1: 5, 24-10
> Day 2: 5, 18-02
> Day 3: 5, 18-04
> Day 4: 5, 16-11
> Total = 20, 77-11

Rose followed a similar plan each of the days. He fished his limit spot in the morning, then once the current started moving he fished the big school that he found. He fished various places in between, but those were his two main deals.

The exception was the afternoon of day 1, when he checked a big-fish spot that he didn't visit in practice and whacked two 5s, which helped him get up to that's day's 25-pound weight.

Some additional details from Rose:

  • "On the big school, you could catch little ones on a shakey-head, but the big ones wouldn't bite until there was current. I found lots of schools, but that was the only one where I felt like I could catch 3-pounders or better. They were sitting right on bottom in 25 feet of water and they never moved. They'd bite when there was current, but other than that, the big ones would just sit there and sulk."

  • "The big-fish spot was just a little subtle flat on a shellbed in the main river. It dropped from 14 to 19 and was perfect for the Strike King 6XD. I weighed four fish from there, all on the crank."

  • "The third day my partner Clent, who won the co-angler side, caught a lot of fish on a swimbait. He left some in my boat – I guess he forgot them – so I picked up one and caught all my weight the final day on it, except one I caught on a 6XD."



    Rose used Seaguar fluorocarbon – Tatsu and InvizX – for all his presentations.

    Winning Gear Notes

    Rose used a wealth of different lures across the 4 days. Following are some of the more critical details.

    > The swimbait was a "regular old 6-inch hollow body," he said.

    > He threw the Strike King 6XD (root beer) on a 7'11" Kistler Z-Bone Mark Rose cranking rod with 12-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon.

    > He threw a 3/4-ounce Strike King Football jig, tipped with a Strike King Rage Chunk (both green-pumpkin), on a 7'3" heavy-action Kistler Z-Bone with 15-pound Seaguar InvizX.

    > He threw a vertical-jigging spoon on a 7' heavy-action Kistler with 15-pound Seaguar InvizX.

    He also threw a white Preacher hair jig and a Strike King Sexy Spoon in sexy shad, again both on Seaguar InvizX.

    He opted not to specify the reels he used.

    The Bottom Line

  • Main factor in his success – "Reading how the fish were set up on my Lowrance HDS units – finding them on the DownScan and SideScan, and then understanding how to catch them by seeing the way they were set up."

  • Performance edge – "My Lowrance HDS electronics. I have four 10" units on my boat – two on the console and two up front. Both places, I have one running DownScan and SideScan, then the mapping and GPS on the other."

    Much of the tackle referenced above is available at the BassFan Store. To browse the selection, click here.