Saturday with no Bassmaster show

This is Kentucky Derby weekend. No Bassmaster Elite Series show. I'm eager for everyone to see the Lake Guntersville show because it's really good. Kevin Van Dam is a hell of a champion and he puts on a clinic.

At Guntersville, I was lucky enough to be invited over to the house where Kevin, Davy Hite and Scott Rook were staying. They were cooking out on the grill and were nice enough to call. Zona and Sanders were there too. There was a lot of talk about the shad spawn. And how quickly viewers of the Bassmaster shows pick up on what the pros are doing. Nothing is a secret in this sport. The avid fans watch everything on slo-mo, I think, clicking through the footage frame by frame to see exactly where the winners are and exactly what they are throwing.

There was lots of talk about fishing , but Kevin never reveals too much about what he's doing. He is a champion on the grill too, I have to say. Kevin might be the most competitive person I know. Jerry McKinnis is a close second. If there were a competition for grilling, Kevin would enter. And win.

Kevin is known to fish very fast. Last weekend, while the TV crew was waiting for the weigh in to start, one of the camera guys was telling me about covering Kevin. He said that it seemed like he was catching them on every cast. His exact words were, "He was just skiing three pounders into the boat and tossing them off the other side. Then he hooked one and everything got realy slow. I knew he had something special."

Here's my take on Kevin. He is without a doubt, the most positive person I know. My personal mantra has become....WWKVDD? What Would KVD Do? Whenever I am challenged by something and feel myself give in to the temptation to whine or complain about something in this fishing business, I literally ask myself that question. I have learned a lot from being his friend.

You can listen to an audio blog of Kevin's Lake Guntersville experience here.

And you can see the Lake Guntersville tournament next Saturday on ESPN2.