Gary Yamamoto

"I was four years old. My parents leased a farm on the island of Oahu in Hawaii where I was born and raised. On weekends, we would travel to the farm to work, but I was too little to make much of a contribution."

Gary amused himself by digging up earthworms. Then, bamboo-cane fishing pole in hand, he would set out for a nearby river. For a four year old, the jungle was endless and frightening.

"What's called American grass grew in the river," he recounts. "It was so thick and solid that I could slide out into it, and it was slippery, and get closer to the fish."

He snagged a whole bunch of those fish.

Gary fished all of his childhood years in both the rivers sluicing and wending through the islands and the surrounding Pacific Ocean. At age 18, he stepped foot on the mainland for the first time and enrolled in a California junior college to study electronics. But he put his education aside to enlist in the Air Force during the Viet Nam War.

Gary Yamamoto returned to California after his tour of duty in the U.S. Military to complete a business degree and begin a computer sales career. But soon, he was searching for escape from the hustle and bustle of southern California. He found it in the LA Times: a campground for sale in Page, Arizona. Yamamoto bought the campground on the shores of Lake Powell and there, soon recaptured his childhood interest in fishing - he won his first bass tournament on Powell, and the prize was an outboard motor. "That meant I had to buy a boat," Yamamoto smiled.

Soon, he became frustrated with readily available lures - in order to succeed, he'd have to design a better bait. "Our bait has always been a something of a secret," he says with a grin, "and we're still a secret in many places." But the market (not to mention the fish) gobbled up everything Yamamoto sent its way, and as they say, the rest is history.

Today, Yamamoto is a successful, full-time tournament participant in the United States, and regularly competes all over the world. In addition to distribution centers in Arizona and Texas for the U.S. market, Yamamoto Custom Baits owns distribution companies in Europe and Japan. Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits is a flourishing international company - the stuff of the American Dream - determination, guts, hard times, and finally… success.

Arizona Angler Sweeps U.S. Open

LAS VEGAS, NV--Gary Yamamoto of Page, Arizona, bagged the biggest bass fishing prize in the West on Thursday at Lake Mead, capturing the 1995 W.O.N. Bass U.S. Open. His three-day total of 31.22 pounds gave him the $50,000 top prize over a field that included the best bass fishermen in the nation, plus seven of the top bass anglers from Japan.

Not only did Yamamoto win the $50,000, he had a large bass on two days of the event, worth $1,000 each day, and one of those was the tournament's biggest bass, 4.58 pounds, which also gave him the overall Big Bass Prize---a $23,000 Ranger bass boat and trailer, Mariner 150-hp. outboard, Exide batteries, MotorGuide trolling motor and Hummingbird electronics--a grand total of $75,000 for Yamamoto, the maker of Yamamoto Custom Baits, some of this nation's and Japan's most popular soft plastic baits.

Yamamoto hit the scales at Callville Bay Marina with a good limit of jig fish on each of the first two days. On the critical third day his four fish were big enough to best the field by over a pound.