Toshinari Namiki lit up bass fishing last year with a win at the Ouachita River FLW, plus two other FLW Tour Top 5s and a 2nd-place finish at the Cabela's Top Gun Championship. His season this year wasn't nearly as productive, but he is fishing the FLW Tour Championship this week and currently leads his bracket after day 1.
It looks like his U.S. fishing career will come to abrupt halt this week though. He told BassFan that this event will be his last in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. He plans to return to Japan for the next few years in order to fulfill sponsor obligations. In short, those sponsor obligations to companies like Daiwa, Sunline and Fina allowed him to fish the U.S. for the past 4 years, but they also included stipulations that he'd eventually have to return to do promotional work in Japan.
"I have to go back to Japan," he said. "I have contracts with Japanese sponsors that say I have to stay and do promotion work in Japan. They (my sponsors) wanted to me to do it this year, but I said, 'Please wait one more year.'"
He will occasionally travel back to the U.S., but won't fish. "I will come back to the U.S. to see everybody," he said. "I want to keep in touch. Maybe I will come for some TV shows."
About giving up the Tour, he said: "I'm half-and-half – happy and disappointed. The reason I agreed to those contracts is I will be 40 years old this year, and I have family in Japan – parents. So I thought that maybe it's time to stay in Japan and take care of that."
