Congratulations JON! 

Nearly busting his dream to catch a 10 pound bass, ESPN Outdoors BASS Federtaion Nation Tournament Manager, Jon Stewart landed this 9.7 pound Lunker of a Lifetime! 

9.7 Pounds!

click on this link: http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/bassmaster/federation/news/story?page=b_blog_FN_stewart

My best five fish would have weighed around 30 pounds. It was a great day. After the 20th fish, I decided to make a few more casts before heading home. That was a great decision on my part.

I cast into a brushpile with my green pumpkin Senko, and a fish bumped it. I set the hook and knew it was a good fish. Then it jumped, and I new it was a great fish — quite possibly the 10-pounder that had eluded me thus far in my fishing career. After a fight of what seemed to be 20 minutes but was really just a couple of minutes, I was able to get the big bass in. I didn't bring my scale, so with one hand holding the fish in the water, I dialed my wife on my cell phone and asked her to bring my scale. She was there in less than five minutes. I told her I didn't think it was as big as I had originally hoped, but I put it on the scale and it hit 10 pounds.

YES! ... No, it settled in at 9.7 pounds. Not the 10-pounder I had hoped for, but a personal best nonetheless.

I released her and watched her swim away. I caught a few more smaller bass, and that's when I said to myself as the day was ending, "This was the best day ever." As I was driving home, though, I wondered if it really was the best day ever.

I got to thinking that I have said those words a lot times over the years. March 15, 1985, in the mountains of Colorado was the day that Valerie and I became "promised" to each other. How many of you guys out there can remember the day you and your wife became officially boyfriend and girlfriend? Impressive, huh? Maybe not, but I was 19, and I thought that was the best day ever.

I said those words on June 6, 1987, when I married my beautiful wife. I also said those words on March 15, 1989 and again on July 7, 1993. Those were the days my son and daughter were born.

I remember sitting on the bank of a creek at the Exline Company farm with my Grandpa Stewart and catching bullhead after bullhead and thinking this is the best day ever. I also said it when my Grandpa Sims gave me a .22 rifle for Christmas. A few years later I got a mini bike for my birthday, and that was the best day ever. Or was it the day my son got a scholarship to play football in college and saved us thousands of dollars. Surely that was the best day ever.

Maybe it was the day I got my dog, Torda, or the day I got my pony, Peanuts. How about the day I was given my first car of my very own by my Aunt Connie. I believe it was a 1973 Gremlin with a bashed-in fender, but I loved that car.

No, it was the day my buddy Jeff asked me to fish with him in a local pond tournament, and we took second place. I was hooked on this bass fishing thing from that day on. That was 23 years ago. Maybe it was the day, several years later, that my buddy Jeff and I finished first and second at the Kansas Mr. Bass tournament on Hillsdale Lake. (I was the one in first.)

Come to think of it, I have had a lot of "best day evers." To answer my own question, "Is this really the best day ever?" I think I need to separate fishing from the other stuff. I think it probably was the best day ever — "fishing" — but maybe not the best day ever.

As I grow older, if I am lucky, I will keep having those "best day evers."