Constant Amid the Change at Malibu : Fishing: Wylie runs the same bait shack he did in the mid-1940s, and he dispenses the same advice about the quest for perch in the surf.

Bob Wylie gazes out the window as he often does when business is slow, looking past the traffic and out toward an ocean being lit by the morning sun.

This day will transpire much like any other in the 44 years he has spent in the small Malibu bait shop, which sits inconspicuously between trendy restaurants along a bustling stretch of Pacific Coast Highway.

Customers will stroll in, grab some bait out of the freezer, plop it on the counter and ask about the fishing. Wylie, with a gruff and raspy voice, will answer as best he can and get back to business.

But, although Wylie--along with his wife, Ginny--works out of the same wooden shack he helped build in the mid-1940s, there has been a world of change around him.

Progress has led to the two-lane highway being converted to four; to a crowded state beach replacing the few oceanfront homes that once sat peacefully on the small bluff across the street, and to summertime gridlock and its choking exhaust.

“In the summertime I get tired of listening to that noise,” Wylie says as he watches the cars race by at a fast clip. “I like it up in Alaska.”

But Wylie has a purpose in Southern California and he knows it. Some might view him as a merely an old man peddling bait and tackle from a creaky old wooden shack, but the serious surf fisherman knows better.

Wylies is the only place left on the coast between Playa del Rey and Oxnard where surf fishermen can catch up on the latest fishing conditions and buy their goods.

They find in Wylie, 62, a salty old character who is one of a kind, who has a way with words like no other. Bill Beebe, an outdoor columnist and one of Wylie’s close friends, calls him “a character-and-a-half,” and anyone who has ever dealt with Wylie will agree.

Highway patrolmen occasionally stop in to chat. Deliverymen walk out of the store smiling. Such local celebrities as Michael Landon, Brian Keith and Larry Hagman are said to have patronized Wylie’s establishment.

Fishermen from all over the Southland know him, and most will attest to his accuracy and consistency regarding surf fishing up and down the coast.

A writer for Western Outdoor News magazine called Wylie “an institution.”

Wylie disavows such distinction, but says proudly: “There’s a little-bitty door right there, and we haven’t made any big fancy place out of it. But I got people from all over the world who walked through that door, and they like it like this.”

But Wylie’s world has changed with the times. He talks of the days when perch fishermen ruled the beaches at night. He catered so heavily to these specialty fishermen that he had to stay open 24 hours to keep up with demand.

Wylies was at the center of it all--headquarters for as many as 19 clubs that would hold Saturday night perch fishing derbies during the winter months.

People would sign up at Wylies, fish up and down the coast from dusk to dawn and meet for the morning weigh-in.

“We had to have the weigh-in at Zuma Beach to accommodate all the cars,” Wylie recalls while pacing his creaky wooden floor. “There used to be 300 to 400 people every damned night plus their families.”

He points to a plaque on the wall, in honor of the first derby held in 1947 by a local post of the American Legion, then to several others honoring him for his cooperation.

“They were strictly (for) barred perch, all at night,” Wylie says, explaining that the small and feisty perch are particularly active at night.

But interest in the nocturnal sport of perch fishing has waned. Gangs and transients are the new rulers of the beach, and most fishermen are finding it safer to wait until dawn to hit the sand.

“There’s only seven (clubs) left holding derbies,” Wylie says. “These guys, they keep on trying. They sit out there all night long, the guys that are really die-hard fishermen. But see, they no longer take their wives and kids to the beach with them. They have to park a block from the beach and get on the beach. They never use lights anymore because the cops will run ‘em off.

“It’s sorry, it really is. The guys used to go out, they’d take their wives and their kids and they’d fish all night.

“People ask me, ‘How come you don’t stay open 24 hours anymore?’ I tell them, ‘Hell, you go on over to the supermarket, they’ll sell you a bag of squid or some anchovies or worms.’

“We had shootings right across the street, we had a couple of murders--this is all this last summer. We had a couple of guys who were fishing and when they finally crawled in their (sleeping) bags and went to sleep, somebody hatcheted them to death.”

Harry Edilson, whose Playa del Rey tackle shop has existed even longer than Wylies, used to be a nighttime perch fisherman, but said he has learned from experience to stay home after dark.

“We were fishing down past Zuma last year, and a couple of guys come at us and were going to hold us up,” Edilson says. “So I had a .38 (caliber pistol) and was going to shoot a couple of them, and they took off.”

Still, both Wylie and Edilson will tell you they have no regrets, and there will always be fishermen who will always have needs.

“You couldn’t be in a better business,” Wylie says, explaining as only he can: “Every now and then, you have some guy that’s got a chip on both shoulders and one on top of his head. He’ll have a car and he’ll buy a little and be complaining. I’ll always tell him, ‘You know what, you got the wrong attitude. You got the day off, you’re able to get up out of bed, drive that car out this far. What you ought to do is go back home and clean up and go down to the children’s hospital and look at the people lying in bed, and they’re going to be raised in that bed and will never have the opportunity you got.’

“But on the whole we got people that are happy. They are going fishing and doing something they like.”

A customer walks in, opens the freezer and grabs a bag of bait, eyes some tackle but decides he already has what he needs. Wylie tells the man: “There’s no corbina and some barred perch. It’s been slow because of the weather, but it should pick up.”

He then points to two photographs on the wall, one of a fisherman holding a 17-pound 13-ounce halibut he caught recently in the nearby surf, the other of an angler holding a stringer of barred perch he filled in Ventura.

“That’s all there is,” he says.

The man walks away, and Wylie goes back to the window.

“I got customers that might drive from Riverside, come here and get bait, go on to Oxnard, Ventura, catch fish and hop on the road back,” he says proudly. “I have some guys that go to (Santa Barbara County’s) Jalama, Gaviota, Goleta. . . .”

Most report their successes or failures to Wylie, providing him with his continuous pipeline of information.

The telephone rings, and Wylie talks for a minute and hangs up, laughing as he hurries out of the store and across the wooden patio. The caller had caught a three-foot leopard shark the previous night and had left it in a box on the side of Wylie’s store.

Wylie walks out, grabs the shark by the tail, walks back in and stuffs it in his refrigerator. “He called and said he’ll be in to fillet it up,” Wylie explains.

Another man walks in and goes directly to the bait receiver where Wylie keeps his sand crabs--considered the bait for barred surf perch.

Before he could say a word, Wylie tells him: “Hey listen, you just can’t get them right now. That damned sand is cut out three or four feet (from a recent wind storm), and when that sand goes, so does the crabs.”

The man nods, turns immediately and walks out. Wylie says: “That was one of your perch fisherman. Perch fishermen, they won’t even fish without hard-shell crabs.”

He shakes his head, laughs and adds: “But you know what, when fish are hitting, they’ll hit anything.”

He tells of the biggest barred perch he has ever seen--a five-pound three-ounce fish caught years ago on a piece of dried shrimp that had been hanging on a hook for more than three weeks.

“A little girl was letting it up and down in the water at high tide, and the fish grabbed it,” Wylie says. “The mother ended up bringing it in. Everybody was all excited.”

There was the four-pound 14-ounce barred perch taken on a white lure by a girl who had never held a rod before.

“That’s always the way,” he says. “Beginners, women and children and someone who has never held a rod before.”

Just then, another customer walks in with his two sons, picks up an assortment of bait and walks up to the counter. Wylie asks one boy how his Christmas was. The youngster is too shy to answer. Wylie then hands both boys some chocolate. They smile and respond with a quiet “Thank you.”

“Well, now. Now you’re talking to me,” Wylie says.

They leave with a lasting impression of Bob Wylie, a man who has seen a world of change, but a man who many hope never will.