60 Years On The Delta
Competitive Fire Still Burns Hot Inside Thomas

Photo: FLW Outdoors/David A. Brown Although he's 73 and suffering from some health issues, Dee Thomas can still hold his own against the top anglers in the West, as he proved last fall at the California Delta Western FLW Series.

Dobyns picked one of his fellow panelists – the legendary Dee Thomas. As he waxed on about how much he'd enjoy spending a day at the California Delta in the back of the inventor of flipping's boat, Thomas, a couple of chairs away, sat with his arms folded across his chest, shaking his head.

"Not gonna happen, Dobyns," he muttered after the tribute from his long-time rival had concluded. "Not gonna happen."

At age 73 and on bottled oxygen 24/7 due to the long-term effects of a smoking habit he kicked 20 years ago, Thomas' spirit is as competitive as it ever was, even if his body isn't. He'll fish 25 to 30 tournaments on the Delta this year, plus a few at other venues, and he's on the water 4 days a week practicing for those events.

"I'm not out there at daybreak anymore – I get there at 8:30 or 9:00 and I'm off by 3:00," he said. "I try to utilize those days toward my tournaments and I'm always looking for new water to fish, even though I don't think anybody alive knows this place as well as I do. I've been fishing the Delta for 60 years now.

"My absolute favorite thing is to win a tournament against a bunch of guys who are all less than 30 years old – that fire burns just as hot today as it did when I was 35 and I got started in this game. But fishing's been my passion since I was 9 or 10 years old and I'll fish until the day I die."

Quite a 'Stick'

Many BassFans know at least part of the story about how Thomas, a 2007 Bass Fishing Hall of Fame inductee, came to invent the technique that revolutionized tournament fishing in the 1970s and remains the dominant tactic in the game. It stemmed from a practice called "tule-dipping," which utilized a super-long rod (12 feet or longer) with about 8 feet of line tied to one end. There was no reel involved.

That practice, which resulted in bites from fish (often large ones) that conventional anglers couldn't get a bait in front of, had been around for quite sometime when Thomas saw it at Clear Lake during his boyhood. He eventually discovered that lashing four 4-foot utility-company measuring sticks together made for highly effective quasi-rods, and he began showing up with them at tournaments.

"The first tournament he went to they just pounded him – they beat him like a drum," said California pro, media personality and Western tournament historian Kent Brown. "They all laughed and said, 'Yeah, bring your long rods back again next week.'

"Well, he did, and he whipped them good. And then he did it again. It wasn't long after that when a bunch of them got together and banned the rods."

Word spread, and then-Fenwick president Dave Myers contacted Thomas with the idea of designing a rod that would basically do the same job as his tule-dipping apparatus, but would conform to the new standards that mandated a maximum length of 7 1/2 feet. Once he had a reel to work with, Thomas developed a new technique that offered much greater line control and more versatility regarding target proximity. Thus flipping was born.

He took the new technique eastward in 1975 and won a Bassmaster Invitational at Bull Shoals. He taught it to his friend, fellow "Delta rat" Dave Gliebe, and Gliebe headed east and won two Invitationals the following year.

How powerful was Thomas' influence on the sport? Consider this from Hank Parker.

"He shaped and molded the biggest revolution there's ever been in all of bass fishing," said the two-time Bassmaster Classic champion. "The single most impactful method of fishing was developed by Dee Thomas, and Dee Thomas alone. Dave Gliebe, Gary Klein, Denny Brauer and other guys followed suit, but the new ground was plowed by nobody but Dee.

"When I won the Classic (for the first time) in '79, several magazine and newspaper articles mistakenly mentioned that I was the inventor of flipping, and I immediately corrected that. It was absolutely untrue and I never led anybody to believe it was true. Dee Thomas was the king and the master and I was unworthy of being mentioned in the same breath. Let that truth stand."

Photo: ESPN Outdoors Native Californian Gary Klein had the confidence to launch a pro career due solely to what he'd been taught by Thomas.

Thomas has had a profound impact on the careers of many Western standouts, but none more so than Gary Klein, who was 15 and working a summer job at a Lake Oroville marina when he met Thomas in 1973.

"I didn't know anything about organized competitions at the time, but there was a Western Bass tournament there one weekend and I got to hang out and pump gas and talk about fishing," he said. "Dee won that event and at the awards ceremony, me being a cocky kid, I went up and introduced myself and told him that someday I was going to be better than him.

"That kind of kindled and spurred our relationship and he eventually accepted me like the son he never had (Thomas and his wife have three daughters)."

Klein spent a lot of time traveling and fishing with Thomas over the next several years and absorbed everything about flipping and other aspects of the game that the master was willing to offer him – according to Klein, Thomas' competitiveness has prevented him from ever teaching it all to anybody. With Thomas' encouragement, Klien stepped up to the Bassmaster circuit as a 21-year-old in 1979 and won the second tournament he fished at Arizona's Lake Powell, beating out runner-up Bill Dance by a pound.

"I'd blown my engine on the second day, and going into the (final) day Dee had found somebody who owed him a favor and got that guy let me use his boat. Also, Dee (who finished 14th) was fishing some of the same water I was, but he pulled totally out of it that day.

"When I came in, he was the only guy standing on the dock waiting to see if I could beat Dance. He watched me load my fish into my bag and said, 'Well, it looks like you've got it, son.'''

The two-time Bassmaster Angler of the Year (AOY) makes no bones about the benefits he derived from Thomas' tutelage.

"Looking back, what he taught me meant my career. The deciding factor in me leaving California and coming back East to fish was I'd been so well taught in the flipping technique and I knew there was a (time) window there for me to use that to my advantage.

"As long as I focused and fished my strengths, I could make the rest of the field compete with me for awhile. I had that ace – nobody else would be as well-versed in that technique."

Not Big on Hardware

Lord knows how many tournaments Thomas has won around his home region over the past four decades. He can't determine that number by counting trophies because he doesn't have any – he's given them all to local clubs and kids' organizations to use as prizes in their own events.

He has no idea as to the whereabouts of the plaque Ray Scott handed him at Bull Shoals in '75. He doesn't even have the trophy he got for making the Top 10 at the Delta Western FLW Series just last fall. That one now belongs to George Dagnino, one of his local tournament partners.

Photo: BASS Communications Thomas has never been big on trophies and has no idea what became of the one Ray Scott handed him at Bull Shoals in 1975.

"Trophies make good firewood, as far as I'm concerned. The most important thing is the respect from your peers. I've got a lot of friends and there's a lot of other people who don't like me – my mouth's gotten me in more trouble than I can shake a stick at. But those people respect me and I'm not going to change for anybody."

A Place in Peril

One subject Thomas runs his mouth on a lot these days is his beloved Delta, which faces an uncertain future due to California's ongoing water-rights issues and numerous lawsuits filed by one environmental group or another seeking the eradication of predatory species such as largemouths and stripers.

"The state's doing everything it can to destroy the fisheries in Northern California," he said. "They want all the water so they can irrigate a desert (the arid southern half of the state) with it. What's happening is atrocious, and every time I start talking about the politics of it, I get mad.

"A lot of fishermen have big egos, but we need to get together as one unit and go to Sacramento and get something done. And if the (legislators) didn't do it, then we could vote them out of office. But we're all going to have to band together to get what we want, which is more protection for the fish and not so much for what the human species wants."

On a happier note, he'll be observing intently as the Bassmaster Elite Series invades his stomping grounds this week. He said conditions should be ideal for huge bags and noted that renowned Delta guide Bobby Barrack got three bites one day last week that added up to more than 30 pounds (a 14 1/2-pounder, an 11 and a 6).

He predictably picks Klein to win, but he warns to watch out for others, such as master flippers Brauer and Tommy Biffle and dropshot ace (and 2007 Delta winner) Aaron Martens. He's also hesitant to pick against Mike Iaconelli because of his never-say-die approach or Kevin VanDam due to his spinnerbait skills and all-around greatness.

"If the spinnerbait bite turns on and VanDam steps on the right piece of water, he could devastate everybody. But there's so much strength in that Elite Series – any of the Top 25 or 30 could jump right to the front of the pack.

"I'd just like to wish each and every one of them good luck."

Notable

> Thomas has made the Top 10 in two of the three Western FLW Series events that've been conducted at the Delta – he was 8th last year and 7th in 2008.

> He didn't become a full-time fisherman until the early 1990s, when he retired from his job as a grocery produce manager.

> His initial meeting with Iaconelli was similar to his first encounter with Klein. "We were in the Dallas airport and I was coming back from Florida, and he came up to me and said he was going to be a star someday. He was in his late teens or early 20s. I may not like everything he does, but I have to respect a guy who fishes like that. There's no quit in him."

> In addition to the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame, he's also a member of the National Freshwater Fishing and California Sportsman's shrines. All three inductions have occurred over the past 4 years.