The past week to ten days have seen some interesting occurrences at the Reese home in Auburn , Calif. On the upside, 2009 Bassmaster Classic Champion Skeet Reese and his wife Kim were able to participate in a kid's fishing day with their daughters Leamarie and Courtney on Folsom Lake near their home. Along with the kid's tournament, they also spent time fishing with family and friends at farm ponds near their home.

While spending time with family and friends is always something to be cherished, the occurrence was even more significant following the wildfire that swept through north Auburn , destroying more than 60 homes and businesses and missing the Reese home by merely a mile.

“It was definitely a scary situation,” said Reese about the fire that threatened their neighborhood. “We got calls from the Sherriff to be packed and ready to evacuate, which we did, but fortunately the fire never got closer than a mile from the house.”

Other residents of Auburn did not find themselves so fortunate, as homes and businesses were left as charred ruins. “We wanted to help out as much as we could, so we went through the house, loaded up the cars with food, toys, clothes and blankets,” he said of his family's desire to help. “We all looked for things that people might need, and the girls wanted to give toys to other children who lost everything; it was really touching to have them want to share like that.”

While the fire dominated the news, the Reese's sandwiched the catastrophe with family time built around fishing. They participated in a kid's fishing tournament at Folsom Lake the weekend before the fire, and the weekend after they spent fishing farm ponds with friends.

Skeet and Courtney head for the scales

The day started at five o'clock in the morning, and while normal for a professional angler, it was not for two young children, but Reese said getting them up wasn't hard. “Lea and Courtney were really excited to fish in their first tournament,” said the proud papa. “Their goal was to catch a big fish and get a trophy to put next to mine. They both weighed fish and got participation ribbons, but didn't catch anything big enough to get a trophy; we had fun anyway.”

According to Reese, the day was spent fishing for the first few hours, but as both girls felt they had done well enough, their attention turned to play. “They were playing games in the bottom of the boat, and Courtney decided that squishing worms was fun, so there was worm poop all over the carpet of my friend's boat,” he related, reminded of the work that meant for him. “We borrowed the boat, a Champion that my sponsor Ken Elie at Monsterbasstackle.com bought from me several years ago, and it was detail clean when I got it from him, so I had to clean it up after we were done with it.”

The following weekend was spent putting the Shakespeare rods and reels, provided to the girls by Andrew Marks of Pure Fishing for the kid's tournament, to good use at some local farm ponds. “We went to one a couple towns away and caught a bunch of fish,” said Reese. “Then fished across the street at our friend's property and caught a bunch more.”

As fun fishing had been the order of the day for several weeks, the time to get serious is at hand, as Reese prepares to return to Alabama for the two week drive to the Angler of the Year title. “I'm anxious to get into Alabama and get this thing underway,” Reese said. “The waiting is what starts to eat at you. Sitting here thinking about what the conditions might be makes it hard to relax, I'm glad we get to put things into motion.”