They are putting a lot more trout in there and this is feeding the bass. The ones I'm seeing now are really big with huge bellies, maybe up to 10 pounds.

Some people who weren't able to run for more than a couple minutes at once have finished a marathon and they did that within a year starting out in this group.

I joke that if Donna doesn't know the answer, there probably isn't one. And that's not far from wrong. Donna's extra special to L.A. Reynolds and to her customers.

I talked to pros like Shaw Grigsby and Roland Martin after John won that year, and they all agreed that it probably was the first time a guy who fished in his first pro tournament ever won over $100,000 at it. I wasn't surprised John won at Mead, though, because he always fishes well there. We always say it's tougher to fish in San Diego tournaments because you end up fishing the clock, people and in such a small area of fish that we're lucky to get our spots. At Mead, unless someone is following you, you get big parts of the lake to yourself.

I had the fish on a rope at the end of the dock, and I told John to pull the rope up because at the end was a fish we've been fishing for since we were kids, the one we've been dreaming of catching. When he pulled that rope up, he pulled it ever so slowly, like an inch at a time. And there on the end was that 20-pounder, and it no longer was a dream, but something we both could see and touch.

The vote was 10-8 the day President Bush nominated him, the vote was 10-8 when the hearings began, the vote was 10-8 yesterday, and the vote is 10-8 today.