Retrieval of Oracle records is very slow

I am pulling records from an Oracle 8 database. There are 12,000 records in the database. When first starting the ASPRunner application, it seems like the application is trying to pull all 12,000 records. It is very slow (5-10 minutes) to get to the first page or may timeout. When I narrow the selection using advanced search, the response is fairly fast. There are about 30 fields in the table, some with a fair amount of text. I am only pulling a few, smaller fields on the list page. However, it is still slow.
Is there a way to get it to only select enough records to fill a page? Or is there something else that I am missing here?
Thanks!