Casting for the top
West Memphian Mark Rose heads to Alabama next month for the Forrest Wood Cup, the biggest event for the Fishing League Worldwide.
A third-place finish and a $20,000 paycheck helped jump-start Mark Rose’s professional bass fishing career in May 1999. He was 27 and working as a district director for the Boy Scouts of America.
Seventeen years later and with more than $2 million in winnings, Rose will visit Lake Wheeler near Huntsville, Alabama, on Aug. 4-7 as one of 50 competitors in the Forrest Wood Cup, the Super Bowl for the Fishing League Worldwide.
To say Rose is living his dream would be an understatement.
Here’s what he had to say after his third-place finish in the Wal-Mart FLW Tour event held on the Mississippi River based out of Memphis: “I fished my little redheaded heart out.”
Nothing’s changed. He’s one of the FLW’s fiercest competitors, a throwback to when he was a collegiate baseball player and later when he sharpened his communication skills through speaking engagements for the Boy Scouts.
The drive is still there, he says.
There’s only one thing left on his FLW bucket list, he says, and that’s a Forrest Wood Cup title. He’s won six tournament titles, placed in the top 10 44 times in 236 events and will be making his 10th Cup appearance.
“We work so hard to make it to the Cup every year,” said Rose, who lives in West Memphis. “The fact that you make it is hard enough but to know that it is such a big deal for all of us, knowing that we could win $300,000 (top prize) and that it would be a life-changing title.”
Not that he couldn’t live without winning the title.
He’s one of the sport’s more grounded competitors and has some of the nation’s most respected sponsors, including Strike King Lure Co. out of Collierville, where he has been a member of the company’s pro staff since he first started fishing professionally.
“I have truly been blessed, but this (the Cup) will not define me,” Rose says. “I am very content. All I have asked the good Lord is for me to be able to make a living and provide for my family (wife Christi, and daughters Natalie and Hannah Grace). I have been able to do that, and I can end my career without (winning) the Cup, but certainly it would mean a lot to me, my family, my fans and my sponsors.”
One of those longtime supporters is Rose’s close friend Billy Doyle of Somerville, Tennessee.
“Faith, family and fishing is Mark Rose,” Doyle says, referring to Rose’s motto. “I have probably spent more time in a boat fishing with him than anybody. I’ve got so many Mark Rose stories.”
One, in particular, was about the time Rose and Carl Graham, a noted MidSouth angler, showed up at the hospital where Doyle’s wife was in ICU after surgery. Rose had written Doyle a letter of encouragement, one that he still reads in times of stress.
Another letter comes to mind when reflecting on Rose’s fishing career.
It was a reference letter written in November 2007 by Strike King COO Allan Ranson. The words, Ranson says, remain true today.
Ranson wrote: “Mark’s honesty and integrity is something that I think consumers appreciate. It appears to me that as our culture swings more and more away from good values the general public gets more and more skeptical of what it hears from people who are in promotional or public positions. A person like Mark with unwavering ethics will command more respect and believability from his audience. That, to me, is one of the key ingredients to effective promotion.”
It’s this type of credibility that caught the attention of C.J. Buck, whose faith-based company has been in the knife-making business since 1902.
“Mark Rose caught our interest due to the fact that he is not afraid to discuss his faith and, as everybody knows, neither is Buck Knives,” says company president C.J. Buck. “When Mark found that out he became very interested in joining our Buck Knives team. Mark also has a high-integrity reputation that is second to none in all of professional bass fishing. When we were doing our research we could not find anyone that had anything but positive things to say about Mark Rose and his family. “
Buck will get no argument from another sponsor — Lynn Reeves, CEO of Lew’s Fishing, who says of Rose: “Mark’s character, personality and favorite style of fishing — using crankbaits — made him a perfect fit for our pro staff and we added him to Team Lew’s in early 2013. While we appreciate Mark’s many successes throughout his lengthy FLW tournament career, we like even better how well he serves our brand and the sport of fishing as such a positive role model.”
Rose’s fame has led him to become of the MidSouth’s most sought-after speakers. He has spoken at countless church-sponsored wild-game dinners and recently said the blessing at a breakfast at the 59th International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades in Orlando, Florida.
So, what does he think about fishing the sprawling waters of Wheeler Lake?
“It’s going to be tough fishing,” he says. “There’s going to be a few schools (of fish) where people are going to try to get to first. Outside of that, it is going to be a lot of hard work. Whoever wins this Cup is not going to be given anything. I don’t think one guy is going to say, ‘Hey, I am going to catch all 20 bass off this one spot.’ There will be a true champion.”
Many of Rose’s MidSouth fans will make the 215-mile drive to Huntsville to cheer him on. Doyle believes this could be the year for Rose to bring home his first Forrest Wood Cup title.
“(He’s) my pick to win the Cup,” Doyle says. “Go get ’em, Mark.”
For more information on the Forrest Wood Cup, go to FLWFishing.com.