Peter T. Took It Slow And Easy Under Fast-Paced Format

Some anglers like to clear their heads of all preconceived notions when they arrive at a tournament venue for practice. But Florida's Peter Thliveros has 26 years worth of tour-level experience, so why should he let it go to waste?

Peter T. finished 16th at last year's Oneida Bassmaster Elite Series, missing the cut by just a few ounces. He figured he could do the same stuff and stand a decent chance of defending his title at the Memorial Major, and he was right.

When the Top 12 shifted to metropolitan Syracuse's Onondaga Lake for competition on a six-hole course on days 3 and 4, he used the same primary bait he'd employed at Oneida to put a hurting on those mercury-infested fish. A 4-ounce penalty assessed against Steve Kennedy for a dead fish on the final day gave him his second straight win in the event by a mere 2 ounces.

He caught 39-00 over the final 2 days and claimed the seventh victory of his pro career, and his third in the last 3 seasons. With the Majors scheduled to be discontinued after this year, he'll likely go into the books as the only angler to ever win the event.

Here's how he did it.

Practice

Thliveros' strong finish at Oneida in 2006 had him full of confidence when he arrived from the Elite Series event at Erie.

"I felt like I could definitely put something together there, and by the end of the first day I had a strong smallmouth pattern going," he said. "It involved pitching a Zoom Super Hog.

"The other thing I had going was the same thing I did last year, and that was fishing for schooling smallmouth on a Carolina-rigged Zoom Super Fluke."

He made an important decision on the final practice day: He sacrificed additional time on Oneida to go and drive around Onondaga – a lake he'd never make a cast on unless he was among the Top 12 after the day-2 weigh-in. He couldn't get out of the driver's seat of his boat, but he went around marking every piece of interesting structure he came across on his GPS unit.

Those waypoints saved him valuable time over the final 2 days, when anglers had only 70 minutes in each hole to make as much hay as they could.

"I thought the patterns I was on at Oneida were strong enough that I could take that last half-day and go over to Onondaga and ride the lake. I got to go in my own boat with my own GPS, and I marked a lot of spots that I thought could be productive.

"That probably saved me 5 or 10 minutes in each hole. I knew exactly where I wanted to go and I didn't have to waste time searching."

Days 1 and 2

> Day 1: 5, 13-13
> Day 2: 5, 15-10 (10, 29-07)

Day 1 started out pretty slowly as Thliveros discovered that the grass-flipping bite he'd been banking on was mainly an afternoon phenomenon. He switched to the Carolina rig and got a couple of bites on the outside edges of the grass.

The flipping pattern came into its own at about 10:00.

"That's when I started getting some bites and catching some fish," he said. "I got tuned in to what they were doing, and it just kept building.

"Even though I only ended up with 13-13, I was in 19th place and only a half-pound out of the cut. I knew that if I had a strong second day, I could advance."

The flipping action early on day 2 was even slower than the previous day, so he continued to mix in the Carolina rig to pick up a fish here and there. He eventually ended up on a spot where a huge school of smallmouth had moved in, along with numerous other species.

Those smallmouth couldn't resist that Super Fluke. Neither could the largemouth, walleye, drum or yellow perch.

"I got bit on every cast for 2 solid hours. The wind had started blowing enough that I had to use the trolling motor to keep myself in place, and by the time I'd hooked one, fought it, landed it and culled, I'd have to idle back up to the spot where I was. The whole thing took about 10 minutes every time.

"That was just an enormous school in a very small area. Even before I'd get bit, I could feel the weight hitting the fish."

His 15-10 stringer put him in 6th place at the cut.

Day 3

> Day 3: 5, 20-13

Thliveros started in hole 2 and fared well over the first four 70-minute periods. He had a limit of 3-pounders when he reached hole 6, and then things really got good.

He had numerous rods on his deck, and he picked up one with a modified version of a Carolina rig that Kenyon Hill had dubbed the "Petey rig" in his honor. It consists of a slip sinker above a Tru-Tungsten Smart Peg placed 8 or 10 inches above the hook.

He attached a Super Fluke and went to work.

"I was making fairly long casts to the outside edges of the grass, with the boat away from the fish. The combination of the clear water, the long casts and it being a Fluke presentation that they hadn't seen before are probably what made it effective."

He caught a 5-4 and two others over 4 pounds from that hole, which gave him about 18 pounds. But he wasn't done yet.

He culled again in hole 1 and stopped trying to upgrade – he wanted to save some fish for day 4. So during "happy hour" (the final 80 minutes when anglers can fish wherever they choose), he toured some areas that he hadn't fished during the day.

He came across a rock shelf that was perpendicular to the bank and extended perhaps 400 yards into the lake. He worked that ledge and made two more culls with 4-pound-class fish.

He was first to weigh in and was thrilled when the scale registered 20-13. But the jubilation was short-lived as Dave Wolak, the third angler to the stage, popped 22-00.

"I thought everybody would be chasing me, and when Wolak weighed that 22 pounds, it deflated the heck out of me. I started to second-guess myself as to whether I should've tried to catch more fish."

Day 4

> Day 4: 5, 18-03 (10, 39-00)

The veteran admitted he was "a bundle of nerves" at the start of the final day.

"I figured I had to have another 20 pounds to have any hope of catching Dave," he said. "And I knew the possibility of a 25-pound bag was out there, so anybody else could make a comeback.

"I had my work cut out for me, and I had to really bear down if I wanted to do well."

He started in hole 3 and put 7 1/2 pounds in the well off his first two bites. He added a 3-pounder and broke a fish off before the period ended.

Hole 4 was a bust, but he managed another 3-pounder in hole 5. He filled out a limit with a 4-pounder in hole 6, but that stop wasn't nearly as productive as it had been the day before.

He said one that was at least 6 pounds followed his bait to the boat as he was reeling in. When he saw the fish, he let the bait sink and stripped off line as quickly as he could, and something took it.

He set the hook, but there was too much slack in his line and he never connected with the fish. He doesn't know whether it was the big one he'd seen.

He culled twice in hole 1 and that pushed him close to 16 pounds, but he was thinking that his failure to hook up with the big one at the previous stop had doomed his chances. But he still had hole 2 to go, and he improved his lot there with a 4 1/2-pounder. During happy hour, he went back to some pilings he'd fished first thing that morning.

"The first cast I made in there never made it to the bottom. When I set the hook I could tell it was a nice one, but then I saw it was a smallmouth. I didn't think there was any way I'd end up culling a largemouth with a smallmouth.

"When I got him to the boat, he was hooked in the bottom of the jaw and I got cut two or three times trying to get the hook out. Then I put him on the balance beam, and I was surprised when he weighed a little more than my smallest largemouth."

Still, he figured he'd finish no better than 3rd. But it tunred out he had 2 ounces more than Kennedy's adjusted weight, and Wolak had stumbled and brought in less than 14 pounds.

"There was no way to describe my feeling at that time. I was euphoric, excited and in a state of shock."

Winning Gear Notes

> Carolina-rig gear: 7'3" medium heavy American Rodsmiths rod, Abu Garcia Revo STX reel, 12-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, 1/8-ounce Tru-Tungsten weight, Tru-Tungsten Smart Peg (placed 8-10 inches above hook), 3/0 Eagle Claw offset round-bend hook, Zoom Super Fluke (watermelon or watermelon-red).

> Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy-action American Rodsmiths flipping stick, same reel, 17- and 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon, 1/2-ounce Tru-Tungsten grass weight with Tru-Tungsten Smart Peg, Zoom Super Hog (watermelon-red or green-pumpkin).

> He also caught two schooling fish on day 2 on a Rapala DT10 crankbait (bluegill).

> He's sure his Biosonix unit played a major role. "I kept it loud a lot of the time so I could stay a long ways away from the fish, but they could still hear it. Usually my first three or four casts in a hole would produce one of my better fish, and I'm sure it triggered some of those immediate bites. I think they were focused on that sound and not on my boat."

The Bottom Line

Main factor in his success – "Getting a look at (Onondaga) in practice and having a knack for being able to slow myself down and make the right presentations with soft plastics. I was able to figure out that the fish were positioned on the outside edges of contours and grasslines, and I knew the proper techniques and had the right equipment to catch them."

Performance edge – "My Lowrance GPS. Knowing how to use it and how to read what it's showing me – the grass edges, the contours and what the bottom terrain is. My whole practice is based on what it tells me."

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