Updated: February 21, 2008, 3:36 PM ET / Reese: 'I never wanted to live with regrets'
Editor's note: What follows is an excerpt of the text of Skeet Reese's prepared remarks that he delivered as the 2007 Bassmaster Angler of the Year at the black-tie dinner BASS held for the 2008 Elite Series anglers Wednesday night, less than 36 hours before the Classic.

The year was 1977.

I was 8 years old, sitting in a raft with my dad on Spring Lake, a small inner-city lake in Sonoma County, California.

I remember casting a silver and purple Rebel crankbait with a green and white pushbutton reel. I also remember having no patience, and looking all around while my lure was just floating.

The next thing that happened changed my life forever.

A giant, 10-inch bass grabbed my bait as it was floating on the surface. It took me a second to realize what happened. As I started reeling, the fish pulled back and jumped out of the water. It was the most unbelievable feeling I had ever experienced.

I got the fish in, and my dad put it on a stringer for me. I felt like I was 10 feet tall. But what happened next, I never saw coming. My dad told me I had to let it go because it was too small.

Talk about bursting my bubble — I cried and pleaded to keep that bass. In the end, I released my first bass.

It was on that very day the passion of bass fishing was ignited inside of me. I was hooked.

I remember getting Bass Pro Shop catalogs and marking down everything that I wanted, or that I thought was cool. I also remember going to school in the fifth grade wearing hip waders, a fishing vest, an old Homer Circle-style Penn hat, and carrying my tackle box with all my magical lures for show-and-tell.

Most of the kids thought I was weird, but for me, I was on Cloud Nine. I was sharing my newfound passion with my friends.

I remember getting my first float tube when I was 10 or 11.

I was back on Spring Lake floating around like a bobber when I met a couple of guys that were as obsessed as I was about fishing. Jeff Hampton and Beno H. — they were about five years older than I was, and just as nuts as I was.

So between my dad, Jeff and Beno, I became a sponge, learning how to catch a bass.

The year was 1981.

I was 12 years old, and I got my hands on this bass fishing magazine. There was a story that enlightened me and set the dream in place to become a professional bass angler.

The story was about a man named Rick Clunn. It was at that moment that Rick inspired me and the quest began.

I joined the Redwood Empire Bass Club when I was 14. By 18, I bought my first bass boat. I had a boat before I had a truck to pull it! I guess that shows where my priorities were.

Between the ages of 14 and 25, I was a mess. Not only was I obsessed with fishing, I was obsessed with girls and a party lifestyle. It was part of being young, and when you are young, you make a lot of bad decisions.

Fortunately I never ended up in jail, but I do remember getting the collection and repo notices. I remember paying entry fees with my truck payments and not winning a check, and having to borrow money to get home. I remember living in my truck with many sleepless nights at boat ramps and parking lots. Those were the days of parachute pants, mullets and four earrings.

At the end of that span, fishing is what saved me. My love and passion for fishing outweighed the other lifestyle. Fishing made me refocus on what I had to do to capture the dream that was born at the age of 12 when I read about Rick Clunn.

I stared to focus on work and paying my own bills. I became a more responsible person, and with that came more confidence in my own self being. In turn, I started to finish higher in tournaments, and eventually started to win.

The year was 1997.

Two great things happened that year. One, I met my wife, Kim, to whom I am forever grateful for turning me into a better person. For being my lover, my friend and most of all, for giving me the greatest prize that I will ever receive in my life: our two daughters, LeaMarie and Courtney.

Thank you, Kim, for being there by my side, pushing me, guiding me and supporting me through the highs and the lows over the past 10 years.

You have lived in a van with me for six months without a pot to piss in, to being where we are today. Thank you for being the most incredible mother to our children, and thank you for being my wife.

The other great thing that happened that year was that BASS came out West. They started BASS Western Opens. Here it was, that golden moment, a chance at the dream, a chance to become a full-time professional bass angler.

I was scared to leave a good job, but I never wanted to live with regrets. It was now or never.

I quit my job six months before the first BASS event out West. I only had three or four grand in the bank, but fortunately for me, I won my first five tournaments around home. Now I had 40 grand in the bank and four Bassmaster tournaments coming up. My dream started to become real that year after I won the Open points title and earned my first trip to the Bassmasters Classic.

The Classic was great. I got a taste of what the big league was like, and I gave everyone a taste of my past club life with "the dance."

I qualified to fish the tour the next year. Here it was, another chance at the dream. Kim and I show up to the Potomac living in a van. The first person we met at the boat ramp is some hillbilly from Alabama named Gerald Swindle, and the next was "the Preacher," Marty Stone. Talk about a dysfunctional group to get started with.

To make it short, after that season I thought the dream was over. I finished in the hundreds almost every tournament except the very last one. I finished 38th and got a check.

I remember sitting in a Waffle House (Kim's favorite) with Marty and Gerald and telling them that I didn't think I was cut out for the tour. After having the off season to think about it, I decide to give it one more year, and I'm glad I did. The next year I put myself in contention for Angler of the Year, only to get beat by a rookie phenom named Timmy Horton. He's definitely not a rookie anymore. That year my dream of becoming a professional bass angler truly came to life. It became real.

In 2003 my validation came when I won the tour event on the Harris Chain of Lakes. I remember, prior to that, thinking, "Will it ever happen? Will I ever win here at the PGA level?" When I did, the feeling was amazing.

But not as amazing as the feeling that I was so fortunate to feel this year, winning the Toyota Tundra Angler of the Year title.

Going all the way back to my club days, my main goal each year was to win Angler of the Year, and I have been fortunate to win it at almost every level along the way. To me, Angler of the Year is special for the fact that you are the best day in and day out. It shows you are the most versatile angler and the most consistent.

This was definitely a year of versatility. When BASS announced the Elite Series and the 11-tournament format, I knew we would see a shift in who the versatile anglers were. The Angler of the Year points would show it at the end of the season.

For me, versatility came in the form of a dropshot, a flipping stick, a crankbait, a swimbait, a frog, and being open-minded. But I never thought that I would have to be that versatile and perform at such a high level day in and day out to win Angler of the Year.

I know a lot of people have said I had a dream season. To me, a dream season would have been beating Boyd Duckett by 1 ounce to win the Classic and to beat Steve Kennedy by 5 pounds on Clear Lake. Call me greedy. I call it being competitive, and my competitive juices were definitely flowing this year.

But I wasn't the only one. We saw Casey Ashley and Derek Remitz show up and show their drive, as well as many others. But in the end, there was only one other who rose to all the challenges: Kevin VanDam, arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest angler our sport has ever seen.

Kevin in his own right had an unbelievable season himself, winning two Elite events. To some that would be a dream season, but not for Kevin. Kevin wants to win ever tournament and every title. He wants to catch every fish in the lake. I think he even wants your firstborn child.

If he won Angler of the Year, maybe it would have been, but I doubt it. They say to be the best you have to beat the best, and this year, I did that.

So Kevin, thank you for pushing me to be the best I could be this season.

Thank you for having the class to be there for my Angler of the Year drinking party, and thank you for being my friend. I can only hope there will be many more battles like the one we had this year — as long as I keep winning.

Versatility was definitely one of the keys to winning this year, but it wasn't the most important. The key was all the people who influenced, inspired, taught, guided and helped me over the past 38 years of my life. I would like to thank the following:

My dad. Thank you, Dad, for taking me fishing and teaching me to love the outdoors. I still remember us sitting in the John boat using a coffee can with a string and a weight as our depthfinder.

And you casting that big ol' Producto worm on a little jighead and fishing ever so slow. Damn, that drove me nuts. I wanted to go reel a crankbait as fast as I could. But in the end you taught me how to be patient.

Thank you for teaching me about fishing for all the different species of fish, from freshwater to saltwater. I believe it helped me become a better angler.

Who would have ever thought that we would go from sitting in that John boat to sitting here tonight?

Most of all, I want to thank you for being my dad.

Next, I want to thank John Murray. For those of you that don't know John, he is one of the kindest and greatest anglers you will ever meet, and one of a very few anglers that has never had another job other than fishing. He has made a living fishing tournaments ever since he finished school, which is somewhere around 25 years ago.

John and I have been friends for 20 years, going all the way back to when I drew him on Lake Havasu, and I was a parachute-pants-wearing, pain-in-the-ass, cocky kid. Little did I know then that John would become one of my best friends. No only has he been a friend and a roommate, he has been a mentor and I credit a lot of my success to him.

It takes a lot to earn my respect in the bass world, but I have nothing but 99 percent respect for you, my friend. The 1 percent will come when you finally get married.

Next to thank is Rick Clunn, the Godfather. You have been my inspiration since I was 12 years old. One of the greatest treasures that I have ever received in this sport is that I got to become a friend to you. I never would have though that the man that inspired me to become a professional bass fisherman would be a competitor and become a friend.

A lot of people think you're weird. But if they have gotten to know you the way I know you, they would think you're even weirder.

Just kidding — they would come to find that you're really not that much different, just a lot more intelligent and have a much more vibrant personality than you show.

As time goes by, it's not your unbelievable tournament career that stands out in my mind (probably because you've been fishing for so damn long). It's all those early mornings at the boat ramps having heart-to-heart talks about life, and learning from the Godfather.

It's the handwritten letter from you, congratulating me on winning "the title." It's your jersey that hangs in my office. These are the things that I remember and cherish about you. I only hope that one day I get invited to your tepee that everyone talks about. Thank you, Rick.

I want to thank Gary Klein for showing a California kid that someone from out West can go back East and win.

I want to thank Ray Scott, BASS and all the anglers who set the platform for me to be where I am now.

Thank you all for letting me share a little bit of my love and passion that started that day in a raft back in 1977.

I am humbled, I am grateful, and most of all, I am honored to be your 2007 Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year.

Thank you.

By Skeet Reese, transcribed by Sam Eifling ESPNOutdoors.com, Photos: Provided by Skeet Reese & Cox Group