Semper fi

FLW Tour rookie Thanh Le, a retired Marine, takes the long road to bass-fishing stardom

Make no mistake about it – Thanh Le is as American as baseball and apple pie. Laotian by birth, the angler currently taking the FLW Tour by storm came to America at 14 and has been waving the red, white and blue ever since.

For the last three years, he’s also been giving his fellow American bass anglers a run for their money. His FLW Outdoors career began in 2003, when the Stren Series moved westward. That year, he scored his first top-10 finish – fourth at Clear Lake – and advanced to the Stren Series Championship.

While 2004 was certainly not bad, his 48th-place Western Division ranking was a blip on the radar for Le, which made his 2005 accomplishments all the more remarkable. En route to his Stren Series Western Division Angler of the Year title, Le never finished lower than 21st and scored his first win, which came on Lake Mead.

His No. 1 ranking enabled him to achieve his ultimate goal – advancing to the Wal-Mart FLW Tour in 2006. It was slow going at first, as he ended the first tournament in 106th place. But the fierce competitor was undeterred, as Le picked himself up and put together a season that found him ranked 11th overall in the year-end rankings, a feat which also catapulted the rookie Le into the championship. Ultimately, Le finished 14th at the championship, underscoring the point that the retired Marine is going to be a force to be reckoned with in bass-fishing circles for years to come.

Bouncing around

Although Le is an American citizen and has been for many years, he lived in his native country of Laos until he was 12 years old. From there, he “bounced around” before arriving in the United States in 1978.

Those first years of his life brought the discovery of his favorite pastime – fishing – but he certainly didn’t learn it from anybody close to him.

“I loved fishing when I was a kid,” Le said. “In Laos, it’s a different kind of fishing. I fished mainly for catfish with cane poles. Nobody in my family actually fished. I guess I was just curious. I saw people fish and decided I wanted to do it. I just love the challenge of catching a fish.”

“Loving the challenge” could be Le’s mantra. He describes himself as very competitive, having competed in sports basically all his life. But his tournament bass-fishing career did not take root as a young man largely due to the fact that he spent 20 years in the Marine Corps.

“My dad was in the Laotian army, and it stuck in my brain to serve my country and pick that up as a career choice,” Le said.

Le traveled around quite a bit in his 20 years as a Marine, where he eventually earned the title of Marine Gunnery Sergeant. Most of his time, though, was spent stationed in the United States, where he picked up the art of saltwater fishing.

“Actually, I did most of my fishing when I was in the Marine Corps,” Le said. “When I first joined the service, I started out saltwater fishing. Every night when I’d get off from work, I’d run out to the ocean jetties or public piers and just fish.”

Indeed, Le’s home base of California provided good fodder for saltwater-fishing pursuits. But as bass-fishing fans know, the West Coast is also a haven for some serious bass fishing, something Le caught on to when he grew restless with saltwater.

“When I gave up saltwater fishing in ’87, that led to freshwater fishing and bass fishing,” he said. “I love the idea of tournaments and competition. I’m all about competition and a challenge.”

He says he gave up saltwater because he didn’t like the chilly weather – ironic, since most consider saltwater fishing to be a warm-weather pastime.

“I wouldn’t say I was bored with it,” he said. “I can’t stand the cold, basically. That’s the main thing. The ocean is pretty cold – even in summer, that cold ocean breeze comes in at night.”

Luckily so far, bass fishing hasn’t been too cold for Le, even when he endures below-freezing temps in South Carolina in February and the like.

Ironically, bass fishing is the major reason why Le retired from the Marine Corps in the first place.

“The whole purpose of retiring was to chase after professional bass fishing,” he said. “When I got to the 20-year mark, I decided, `You know what, tournament bass fishing sounds like something I could do and hopefully make a living.'”

Preparing for the future

Deciding to take that course, though, took some preparation. It definitely was not a whimsical decision on Le’s part. There is a rumor floating around that Le sold everything he had, bought a bass boat and hit the trails. The truth, however, is that he bought his first bass boat two years before his retirement.

“I bought my bass boat before I got out of the service because I was still employed,” he said. “I thought, `If I’m going to do this, I’d better be prepared for it.’ I bought a boat with the idea in mind that I would use that for my career choice. Once I started the tournament scene, I was dwindling down my nest egg pretty badly.”

Le also started fishing team tournaments while still in the service to prepare himself for his upcoming career. He says he couldn’t fish professionally at that time due to the responsibilities of being a Marine – you never know when you might be deployed. But immediately upon retirement, Le set his sights on the major trails, mainly the FLW Tour.

“Just my luck, the Stren trail came out West the next year after I retired,” he said. “It worked out almost perfectly.”

Guarding the nest egg

In the beginning, Le fished the Stren Series, BASS Opens and WON Bass events and worked at a couple of marine dealerships because he was “bored to death” in the off-season. Now, though, he says it’s “either fishing or nothing,” thus the dwindling-nest-egg syndrome that affects so many anglers in the early – and sometimes advanced – stages of their careers. That is the reason why Le now calls sunny Florida home instead of the West Coast.

“I took up a Florida residency because of the FLW Tour,” he said. “Most tour stops are going to be on the East Coast, and I definitely can’t afford two residencies, so I packed up everything I owned, got rid of what I couldn’t carry and moved east.”

Although it is indeed fishing or nothing for Le these days, he counts the fact that he does not have the distraction of a second profession among his advantages. However, the flip side of that is that money is almost always a lingering issue.

“My biggest strength is that, since I don’t have a second job, it allows me to spend all my time practicing because I made up my mind that fishing is my job,” he said. “I spend almost if not all of my free time practicing for my job. But (my biggest weakness) isn’t fishing-wise, it’s financial-wise. You don’t know how you can afford to go on to the next tournament if you don’t cash a check.”

Le cashed four checks on the FLW Tour this year totaling $52,000, not bad considering he reduced his overhead considerably by moving east to follow the tournament trails. He also fared very well in the Stren Series Southeast Division this year, ranking 11th and cashing three checks that rang in at just under $10,000. He also qualified to compete in this year’s Stren Series Championship on Wheeler Lake.

Hitting his stride

Overall, Le is pleased with his performance over the last three years, as he well should be. Even though he already has one Stren Series angler-of-the-year title to his credit, he does not own up to having lofty goals for himself. For this retired Marine, the career goal now is just to keep on trucking.

“My ultimate goal is to keep on doing this because I love it so much,” he said. “I want to physically and financially be able to stay on the tour. I’m very, very thrilled that I could stand on my own two feet when I decided this is what I wanted to do. I’m very happy things are working out the way they should be.”

Indeed they are. And after all, isn’t that the American dream?