Wylie’s Bait Shop
Updated: Sep 7
The little shop in Malibu that became a tradition.
I first came across Wylie’s Bait & Tackle while reading about the 2025 Palisades fires that devastated so much of Southern California and the Malibu community.
Scrolling through the various stories of what had been lost I found a photograph of this small wooden building along the Pacific Coast Highway. The faded siding and a tiled roof with some hand made signs and the dry Malibu hills rising behind it caught my eye.
The little shack was far from grand, especially by modern Malibu standards. But it jumped off the page. What caught my attention was the history written on its weathered boards. Stories of the “one that got away” or legendary tales passed on from generation to generation. I imagined it was the type of building travelers speeding along the PCH passed right by, but was loved by locals. And I immediately knew I wanted to draw it.
At the time, I had no idea that on the other side of the country from Malibu, a couple in South Carolina knew the place well.
A Dusty Stop Along the PCH
Kevin and Noelle’s story with Wylie’s began in May 2016.
They had traveled to Southern California many times, but Malibu had mostly been another place they passed through. That year they decided to stay, booking a meticulously restored vintage Airstream perched on a bluff overlooking Zuma Beach. The ultimate California getaway!
The property belonged to a local couple, Bill and Debbie Barlow, whose family had deep roots in Malibu. Bill had originally restored the Airstream for his daughter while she attended nearby Pepperdine. Eventually she chose more traditional housing, so Bill and Debbie began sharing the Airstream with visitors. Enter Kevin and Noelle who arrived with friends and settled in to their new Airstream with a view.
Bill gave the group a little piece of local knowledge.
He insisted that they head “down to Wylie’s bait shop, say hello to Ginny and find the photo on the wall of Bill and his son Tyler” with the enormous fish Tyler had caught. Proof that this fish tale was in fact a non-AI doctored reality.
So that’s exactly what they did.
Ginny, a Turtle, and the Loss of a Malibu Icon
Compared to the oceanfront homes and fancy cars of the glamorous Malibu that most know, Wylie’s must have felt a bit out of place. Kevin remembers it as “a proud, unapologetic, sun-bleached wooden shack” that looked as though it belonged in an old Western movie.
They walked through the door and told Ginny that Bill Barlow had sent them. She immediately
took them to the photograph of Tyler proudly standing beside a five-foot, 53-pound fish, with his father standing proudly next to him.
A quick stop at a bait shop turned into an afternoon that eventually turned into a long friendship.
Ginny was everything Bill had advertised. When they entered, she greeted them “not like walk-in tourists, but like long-lost family returning home.”
She told them stories about growing up around Wylie’s and eventually taking over the shop. There were stories from the years when it stayed open around the clock for fishermen, and others about the giant turtle, affectionately called Mr. Walter, who she sometimes brought to work with her. Mostly, Kevin remembers the ease of being there and “from that afternoon on, we were hooked on Ginny.”
They had walked in as strangers from South Carolina but Ginny treated them as though they had been coming for years. And eventually, that’s exactly what they did.
Whenever they found their way back to Southern California, Kevin and Noelle made a point to return to Wylie’s. For both, “seeing Ginny became our tradition.” Their last visit was in October 2024. As usual, they talked, laughed and caught up, without any reason to think it would be different from all the other visits.
Less than three months later, the Palisades fire destroyed the shop and countless other places in the Malibu area. Homes, businesses, history and iconic places all lost to the fires.
Fortunately, Ginny was safe. And in the days that followed, the outpouring from people near and far who knew Wylie’s made clear just how many others had their own version of Kevin and Noelle’s story.
Finding Wylie’s Again
That was roughly where my connection to Wylie’s began. And calling it a connection at that point is a loose interpretation of the word “connection.”
I’ve only been to California a few times. I had never actually seen Wylie’s in person and clearly had never met Ginny. I found it only because I was reading about what had been lost in the fires and stopped at a photograph of this simple little bait shop.
I wanted to capture Wylie’s because I imagined there were a lot of stories inside the simple buildings weathered walls. Stories of local knowledge, familiar faces, photographs tacked to the walls telling their fair share of fish tales.
So I made the drawing and eventually put it out on the Stoney Bend site and someone all the way in South Carolina, found it. That’s when my connection to the story actually began.
Asking Kevin how he found my drawing was when I learned the other side of the story. The fact that it was a 29th anniversary gift for Noelle; the Airstream above Zuma Beach; and Bill Barlow’s recommendation. Not to mention the enormous fish, the turtle, Ginny, and all those return visits.
What I had seen from Michigan as an interesting old bait shop was, to someone else, a place filled with very specific and very important memories.
From One Coast to Another
The original drawing of Wylie’s now hangs in Kevin and Noelle’s home in South Carolina and I love the unlikely path it took to get there.
There’s no particularly neat explanation for how all the connections happened. But the best part of the story is hearing Kevin say that this drawing “brings the magic right back to us.”
For me, it represents a story I never knew I was looking for.
Scott
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