Toshi Namiki, Palmares of Tournaments to Born O.S.P Lures 

What does the name Namiki remind you of? Machine gun cast with rubber jig? The art of skipping? Actually, he is more than that. He is a champion tournament angler, a lure designer, and an entrepreneur. In this article, I will introduce his biography, some of his lures and the philosophy of his design.

Life history of Mr. Toshinari Namiki  

Born in Kanagawa, he started his bass fishing in 1978, interestingly, with his hand carved lure! Since the very beginning of his bass fishing career, the spirit of lure designer had been there. And the first bass was caught in 1983. 

As a university student, he dedicated himself more to bass fishing, and took part in various local fishing tournaments and won many of them. His dedication made him write his graduation thesis on the survey of bass fishing in Shoji-ko lake, catching bass for a whole term.

After he graduated in 1990, he entered Daiwa Seiko (currently, Globeride Inc.) and was assigned his product development role. At this timing, in this company, there were Mr. Seiji Kato (the founder of Jackall,) and Mr. Toshiro Ono (current president of Jackall). It is said that Mr. Seiji Kato was telling Namiki and Ono to take the qualification test for bass pro in JB (Japanese Bass Professionals Association.) 

In 1992, he decided to leave Daiwa Seiko and became independent as a bass pro. In this year, he was in the 5th position in the JB Japan Pro Series, and ranked 1st in another series, Eastern Pro Series.

In the following years, he climbed up his ranking, and reached the top in both of these series in 1994. Until this year, he won these series more than anyone (6 times,) and he recorded the biggest number of appearances in the top five in each competition in JB. It was the timing that he dominated the tournaments in Japan.

Then he decided to go to the U.S. for another challenge. He joined B.A.S.S from 1995 - 1996 season. In this season he took the 10th position in the Central Invitational series. It brought him the qualification to join the Bassmaster TOP 100 series.

In 1996, he took the 10th, 12th, and 11th, consecutively from the second round of TOP 100 series. These results brought him the final ranking of 25th and he was qualified to enter the Bassmaster Classic, as the very first non-US resident. In the 1997 Bassmaster Classic his result was 34th, and won USD 4,000 prize money. In the years following, he had been entering the TOP 100 series or TOP 150 series, Eastern Invitational, Central Invitational. By 1999, he had been qualified for the TOP 150 series for four consecutive years. It means that he had been one of the top competitors in the very competitive US tournament scenes. On leaving the country’s competitions, he said that he wanted to continue watching the US as he could not understand everything about bass fishing there, and he wanted to continue brushing up his skills in bass fishing. (reference video https://youtu.be/tUSgwoSGb7E?si=9fr6MBy2BOmd-SEF)

After the TOP 150 series in 2000, he returned back to Japan to start his activities in his home county. Then, on top of his competition, he established his company O.S.P Inc. and started to produce his own lures.

In 2003, he returned to the US to enroll in the FLW Tour Tournament. As he said 3 years previously, the US competition scenes were in his mind and he returned there, now with the O.S.P. brand on his shoulder. His result in 2005 was the year-end ranking of 2nd, in FLW Tour Tournament and he was qualified to be in FLW Championship, in which he gained 15th position. 

As he finished his 2006 season in FLW Tour Tournament, he returned to Japan. Since then his activity has been focusing on the promotion of the sport. He started a regular program on cable TV, and visited various countries for his promotional activities. Also he launched the projects to grow the next generation anglers in Japan. Along with his activities in Japan, he joined the open tournament series such as B.A.S.S Open Tournament, in 2017 and in 2018.

When Mr. Namiki was in the B.A.S.S., it was a kind of a golden age of Japanese bass fishing. There was a booming bass fishing population in Japan, and a lot of attention was on the U.S. tournaments. There were many people who took part in them, making their dreams come true, such as Mr. Norio Tanabe, Mr. Takahiro Omori, and Mr. Morizo Shimizu. This generation contributed a lot to the current status of JDM lures globally.

Lures of O.S.P

According to the O.S.P website, this company was founded for himself to be a sustainable professional angler. The better lures of his idea could bring better results in competitions and it could earn the money to keep his activity as a competitor. Based on this way of thinking, O.S.P has been producing the lures, which can catch more fish reflecting Mr. Namiki’s experience, for over 20 years.

Its lures are launched only when he has been sure of particular features are solid. It means their lures are well nurtured or considered enough before they hit the market. This is what Mr. Namiki calls the “10 Years Standard” concept, and it is reflecting onto his well thought products, which endures the changing trends and lasts 10 years. 

One of such lures is Buzzing Crank

Buzzing Crank

This crank was launched in 2000, introducing the new category, top water cranking. The key of this shallow diving crank is to keep its swimming depth range shallower, in various retrieve speeds. The important feature to achieve it is to have a slow floating body. Though it is the shallow diver, to be slow floating keeps the swimming depth stable, avoiding to come up above the surface in high speed retrieve. 

I imagine around the time this lure was developed, Mr. Namiki was in the middle of B.A.S.S. tournaments. He knew the effectiveness of cranks and its importance in the competition, and he wanted to have good shallow diving cranks which could be used at various retrieve speeds. 

DoLive Shad

Next item is DoLive Shad. This is a shad tail worm, that Mr. Namiki boasts it as a masterpiece of his products. Below is the translation of a quote from his blog page about this lure.

“DoLive Shad is the masterpiece, among the items which reflects my idea or concept. The shad tail worm before this lure swims only retrieved and it falls down in the water in an unnatural posture. Then I brought this idea in my company’s meeting. It was the idea to have the shad tail worm to make action naturally while falling, keeping the near parallel angle. It was surely to be a strong weapon in our fishing. However, it was not easy to realize this idea, and I made a prototype. It was an existing shad tail worm with the weighted hook, added nail sinker on the belly, to make the worm sink from its belly, keeping parallel posture. At the same time, I added the movement to allow its tail to move. It could show the concept that the worm has a lower center of gravity, like a DoLive Stick, as it had the rolling action and tail movement even a slow falling without weighted hook, from the thin and flexible connection to the tail. After that, I assume the work to realize the concept was not easy and development staff was repeating trials and corrections.”

This DoLive Shad had been making wonderful testing results and got a lot of bass, from its development phase. According to Mr. Namiki’s observation, the bass following the retrieved bait does not turn back even when this DoLive Shad starts to fall down, stopping retrieval. 

Philosophy of development

For Mr. Namiki, the new action of the lures can be invented from acquiring the new physical structure and mechanical factors. It is not just a slight change of shape or material. The new advantageous structures are coming from the reverse way of thinking, or making the conventional orders upside down. Such structures in O.S.P are HoneyComb Super HP body, One Weight Under Balance System, 90 degree eye, etc. To try to fish in various conditions and many kinds of places or to use a lot of existing lures can let you find the weakness or the point to improve in these products. 

Mr. Toshinari Namiki's passion for bass fishing does not fade at all. His focus on his promotional activity for the sport will bear fruits soon and keep the development of the JDM rolling for the joy of fishing all over the world.