Peter Thliveros hopes for a gold medal repeat in the Games.

Peter Thliveros is never satisfied - at least not when it comes to catching fish.

Thliveros used that quality in 2000 to win the gold medal in the bass fishing portion of the ESPN Great Outdoor Games.

When ESPN picked the Saranac Chain of Lakes for a bass tournament, Thliveros knew the anglers in the field would be faced with an unusual tournament venue. The top anglers in the nation are more accustomed to fishing heavily pressured water, where the fishing can be good, but more often than not it can be tough.

"It was virgin water," Thliveros said. "Which was nice. Because of ice, there's a short fishing season, and when the ice is out, there are a minimal number of boats that utilize the lake."

"So, virtually, there's no pressure. It was almost like fishing a private lake."

Until the ESPN Great Outdoor Games, the Saranac Chain of Lakes had never had the hard glare of seasoned professional anglers looking to see what it can provide. In short, the fishing was easy. Or more correctly, catching numbers of fish was simple.

That same fact also led Thliveros to realize that for the most part, the secrets of those lakes had yet to be uncovered.

"I realized that this was no different than any other tournament," Thliveros said. "And I approached it just like I would a well-known fishery."

"Anytime you come to a lake and the fishing is easy and you're catching a lot of numbers of fish, it's easy to get complacent. You find yourself catching fish without having to go into any real detail."

In big-time professional angling, where catching fish day-to-day is a must to survive, catching a limit each day is paramount. Usually, the angler who can put together a pattern on how to catch five fish a day fares well.

"I think a lot of guys get caught up in catching that limit," Thliveros said. "And limits weren't really a problem. Just about everywhere you went you could catch all the 2-pounders you wanted. But I knew everyone would be doing that."

"I wanted to figure out how to catch the bigger fish. I think the other guys felt that they were catching fish so good, that eventually the bigger fish would bite."

"I wasn't satisfied with that."

Thliveros, a top professional on the B.A.S.S. and FLW Tour professional fishing circuits, utilized his strengths to find bigger bites.

"It's more my style to fish a place thoroughly and milk it for all it's worth," Thliveros said. "So, when I came to a grass bed during practice, I knew I could catch all the keepers I wanted by casting to the edges. But rather than resting on the idea that I could catch fish there, I would work into the grass bed, trying to figure out how to catch the bigger fish."

To do that, Thliveros would bypass the easier, smaller fish on the outside edge of the grass and flip a jig into the grass for the fewer larger bass. He didn't catch as many fish as the rest of the competitors, but the ones he did catch pushed him over the top.

"If you're catching numbers, you've got to figure out what will put you over the top," Thliveros said.

His case in point is Scott Martin of Clewiston, Fla. Martin finished second in the tournament by fishing the outside edge of a grass bed Thliveros referred to as "the best spot on the lake."

"But he was throwing a topwater and a Carolina rig," Thliveros said. "He never explored the potential of the area. But he almost figured it out. In the last few minutes of the tournament, he picked up a jig and tossed it into the grass and caught his largest fish.

"If he had done that any sooner, he might have won," Thliveros said. "For me, I wouldn't have been satisfied until I knew how to catch the bigger fish."