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Given the fact Vexus® Ambassador Tom Huynh is the 2024 National Walleye tour champion and is regarded by his peers as one of the best walleye wranglers in America, he’s totally comfortable with his masculinity while making a living in a world of manicures and pedicures.
He’s also totally comfortable with forward-facing sonar, to the point he launched fishing’s first online curriculum-based platform, with a huge emphasis on FFS for students who subscribe to FishTHU.com. Hundreds of anglers have paid for a piece of his sonar wisdom, and in addition to his online teachings, he also conducts nearly 50 in-person seminars annually.
“I get told I give away too many secrets, but I don’t believe that. I believe in teaching. I don’t believe we should deceive our fellow anglers. Teaching is the first step to growing participation in fishing,” says Huynh, who lives on the North Dakota-Minnesota border.
However, a call from friend Curt Underhill recently led to a teaching opportunity for Huynh in a realm far bigger than fishing. Underhill asked Huynh to use part of a tournament practice day at Lake Sharpe, SD to provide desperately needed sonar instruction to City of Pierre emergency rescue personnel tasked with recovering drowning victims.
“They were pretty discouraged before I loaded them in my Vexus and began to share my knowledge, but after I showed them how to find two sunken practice mannequins on the bottom of the lake in under 3-minutes, their confidence skyrocketed,” smiles Huynh.
The unique front fork design of his Vexus DVX22 tournament boat creates tons of front deck space, which enabled Huynh to carry as many as five rescue personnel at a time for on-the-water instruction.
“We were also able to see the rescue divers on the screen and told them what direction to swim in relation to the practice mannequins. That made a huge impression on them,” says Huynh.
When asked for a free tip to make all forward-facing sonar users more adept, Huynh graciously offered the following.
“Stop overworking your settings. Everybody wants to tune their machines to get a perfectly clear screen like our living room televisions with zero interference, but when you do that, you’re hiding a lot of the critical details,” he emphasizes.
Perhaps it wasn’t exactly what Huynh perceived his practice day would look like in what he often describes as the “most solid built walleye boat on the planet” at the NWT tournament on Lake Sharpe, but he’d be the first to tell you it was even better.
“I’m the son of a Vietnam immigrant, and yet I get to make a part of my living teaching people how to catch more fish. That’s a statement that’s super humbling to my family and me. So, to be able to give back by spending a portion of my practice day helping America’s rescue personnel was super rewarding,” says Huynh.
Solid. A fitting description of Huynh’s character as well as his boat.
