By Steve Price
February 15, 2012
One day back in 1992 a young Japanese angler named Takahiro Omori wrote his list of personal goals on a sheet of paper. Among them was to qualify for the Bassmaster Classic in 10 years, which would be 2001, and win the Classic three years later, in 2004.
His friends in Tokyo laughed at him. Afterall, he was just 22, had never been to the United States, and didn’t even speak English.
Still, Omori followed his dreams, and never forgot the goals on that sheet of paper. He did qualify for the Bassmaster Classic in 2001, and in 2004 he won the Classic. Today, eight years after that amazing triumph, T.O. has written down another goal, which is to win his second Bassmaster Classic.
“I spent two days in December running the Red River, the site of this year’s Classic,” reports Omori, “and I like what I saw. I spent four hours one day and three hours the next, and never made a cast, but I found a lot of potentially good areas, as long as the water remains clear.
“There will be a lot of fishing around shallow cover, flipping soft plastics, or using jigs, spinnerbaits, and square bill crankbaits, and I like it all.”
That’s not good news to the other Classic competitors, the majority of whom have learned that when Omori says he likes something, especially in shallow water, he’s going to be dangerous. What they fear most is his determination to succeed, a characteristic the Japanese pro has displayed ever since he wrote those first fishing goals in 1992.
It actually began a dozen years earlier, when Omori was only 10 years old. That’s when he caught his first largemouth bass. He’d been fishing before with his father and with school friends, but only catching local species. Someone had put largemouth bass in a pond near his home, and he caught one using a live nightcrawler for bait. The fish was only 10 inches long, but that was big enough to catch Omori.
“I really began concentrating on bass then,” remembers Omori, now 41, and winner of seven major national bass tournaments and more than $1.75 million. “I started fishing junior tournaments while I was in high school, and after reading about the Bassmaster Classic in Bassmaster Magazine, I decided I wanted to become a fulltime bass tournament pro, which meant I would have to come to the United States.”
That was easier said than done, however, and after graduating from high school in 1988, it took Omori three more years of working odd jobs to finance his first tournament trip to America. He had entered two events, the 1992 Bassmaster Texas Invitational on Sam Rayburn Reservoir, followed 40 days later by the Alabama Invitational on Lake Guntersville.
“I brought all my best fishing tackle and flew from Tokyo to Dallas,” remembers Omori. “I had no idea where Sam Rayburn was in relation to Dallas (approximately 300 miles), and I spoke no English, but I rented a car and drove away. That’s how bad I wanted to be a bass fisherman.
“In Japan we drive on the left side of the highway, so I started driving on the left as I pulled out of D-FW International Airport. I was driving 45 mph, too, and pretty soon I had about five cars bunched up behind me, although I couldn’t understand why. Finally, when a guy on a motorcycle drove up beside me and motioned me over, I realized I had been driving in the passing lane.”
That was only the beginning of Omori’s Great American Dream Fishing Trip. His flight from Tokyo had landed in the evening so sometime later that night he pulled into a parking lot to sleep. He was going to be in the United States for 40 days, and he had to save as much money as possible; it took him two days to reach Sam Rayburn.
“When I arrived at the boat ramp and looked at Rayburn, all I could see was water,” recalls. “It was larger than any lake I’d ever seen, larger than I’d imagined. Early the next morning when tournament practice began, I stood at the ramp and asked every fisherman who launched if he would take me fishing. At last, one man agreed to take me, and that day I caught two bass, my first American fish. I was thrilled!
“The next day, I went to the official tournament registration and I met Gary Yamamoto, who was also competing. He spoke a little Japanese, and tournament officials asked him to be an interpreter, and he also took me fishing the next day. I had actually met Gary during a fishing promotion he made in Japan, but of course he did not remember me. He was renting a house at the lake for the tournament and invited me to stay with him that week. He really took care of me there, and we have been friends ever since.”
In the tournament, Omori finished in 304th place, out of 325 fishermen. He caught one bass he could weigh in the final day, but overall, he was in culture shock. After seeing the fish-catching skills of the American anglers – Shaw Grigsby won the event with 62-8 – and the way they could drive boats on the big lakes, Omori knew immediately he had a lot to learn.
“The week after Rayburn I came to Lake Fork because I had heard so much about the lake in Japan,” says Omori, “but because I did not know anyone and could not speak English, and did not have a boat, I fished from the shore, and in a week I caught three
eight-pounders. I thought every lake had big bass like that, because they had caught them that way at Rayburn, too.
“At Lake Guntersville I finished 280th. I was still sleeping in my car in the parking lots; during that first 40-day trip to the U.S., I only spent two nights in a motel and I only ate one meal a day. After Guntersville, I went back to Japan to work and tried to earn money to come back and fish the tournaments again.
