Tyler Lee’s fish tales of the ’80s

Bill Lynch digs up reminiscence about Sonoma fishing in the old days, from Tyler Lee.|

Tyler Lee, former Sonoman and current fly-fishing guide in Northern California, recently sent me a 1500-word memoir about fishing in Sonoma Valley when he was a kid in the 1980s. To many of us who grew up here and fished local waters, it sounds very familiar. Tyler does a good job of bringing the local fishing past alive. I will attempt to serialize it over the next few weeks. Here’s the first part:

“I spent a great deal of my childhood riding my bike, an old Schwinn Mesa Runner, all over Sonoma looking for places to fish. Some days, I’d ride with my fishing rod in hand all the way across Sonoma to Schellville to fish a reservoir that held bass and huge catfish. Joe Weber, my best buddy and childhood friend, had told me about it.

“Other days I rode to the end of Carriger Road, out beyond the Sonoma National Golf Course, to a beautiful pond that held bass.

“My favorite place was Sonoma Creek. I’d ride my bike to the end of Solano Avenue, scrabble down the riverbank, silently stalking the quiet pools below hoping to catch a glimpse of a turtle before it slid off its perch into the water. I’d search for Indian artifacts along the creek, or a green heron in the treetops. In the winter, the lamprey eels would come.

“Most of the time I didn’t need to bring fishing bait. A fork tied to the end of a stick made a great spear for crawdads. After extracting my prey and baiting the hook with a crawdad tail, I’d stalk squawfish (or more accurately, Sacramento pikeminnow).

“Today, as a fly fishing guide on the Sacramento River, that’s not a fish I look forward to catching. But then, when I was twelve, they were the prizes.

“One summer, my younger brother, Colby, and I spotted fish of leviathan proportions in Sonoma Creek just below the Verano Ave Bridge. If we caught them, we would be legends.

“We both played baseball for the late (and awesome) Mike O’Donnell, coach of Passetti Trucking and later the Eagles. After games at Paul’s Field, Colby and I would head down to Sonoma Creek to explore.

“One afternoon, with the place to ourselves, Colby and I spotted two or three huge fish circling around the bridge abutments. Without hesitation and not knowing what kind of fish they were, we were off on our bikes, still in our baseball uniforms, heading home to get our fishing gear.

“We tried for hours, days even, to catch those huge fish without any luck, until one day our father heard about our excitement and frustration and came down to the water with us. He said the fish were grass carp and they wouldn’t eat the lures we were pitching at them. They were bottom feeders.”

Did Tyler and his brother catch those monster carp? Find out next Friday, when part II of Tyler’s fishy tales of the 80s continues.

Closer to home salmon fishing remains outstanding off the Sonoma Coast with limits or near limits every day. Call Capt. Rick Powers, Bodega Bay Sportsfishing, 875-3344.

Inside San Francisco Bay, halibut and striped bass fishing is excellent right now. Call Keith Fraser, Loch Lomond Bait Shop, San Rafael, for latest conditions and to book a bay fishing party boat, (415) 456-0321.

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