Flipping Pioneer Thomas Dies At 85
Dee Thomas was a dominant force in Western tournaments before and after his short stint on B.A.S.S.' national tour.; Photo MLF
By Pete Robbins
Special To BassFan
Bayless Dewayne “Dee” Thomas, a California tournament angler who is renowned for refining the flipping technique and spreading it eastward in the 1970s, has died at age 85. Thomas had battled lung cancer for years had been on bottled oxygen for well over a decade as the result of a smoking habit that he’d managed to conquer many years earlier, but continued to fish seriously and competitively even after the disease was diagnosed as inoperable.
Thomas was a member the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame, the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and the California Outdoors Hall of Fame. He won the 1975 Bassmaster Arkansas Invitational on Bull Shoals, competed in the 1975 Bassmaster Classic on North Carolina’s Currituck Sound and the 1996 Red Man (now BFL) All-American in Arkansas. Despite all of those achievements, he is best known for revolutionizing the sport by taking the technique then known as “tule dipping” and transforming it into the flipping and pitching techniques that are now standard. As such, his influence extended not only to direct mentees like Gary Klein and Hank Parker, but also to the Hall of Fame careers of anglers including Denny Brauer and Tommy Biffle.
"He shaped and molded the biggest revolution there's ever been in all of bass fishing," Parker told BassFan in 2010. "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."
