The title is a bit silly, but since everyone here in Wine Country lives in Tuscan estates and noshes on crostini for lunch, any article about Bass Fishin’ surely needs to have either “artisan” or “hand-crafted” put in front of it.
Bob Padecky, one of the local scribes on sports over at the Press Democrat, has a great profile of a home-grown fishing god named Skeet. Really – Skeet. He’s references as the “Tiger Woods” of competitive fishing.
Link to article, and some fishing spots, below.
Go on. Be a Skeet.
When Reese was growing up, he would fish Mountain Shadows Golf Course (now Foxtail Golf Club). Yes, he would fish a golf course. Standing water. Little rivulets.
“But since they don’t like you fishing a golf course,” said Reese with a deadpan, “I’d fish there at night. I’d also find golf balls, too, and then throw ‘em at the golfers the next day.” Ah, and who says life in tract-home suburbia is dull. “CAUTION: TEENAGE FISHERMAN” is not a sign you see on every golf course.
Then again, not every golf course is within pole-distance of someone who will grow up to be one of the best fishermen America has ever produced.
“Skeet is one of the most versatile fisherman I have seen,” said Andrew Sayles, president of the California chapter of the Bass National Federation. “He can catch fish in six inches of water and he can catch fish in 80 feet of water. He can catch fish with any kind of lure. He is like Tiger Woods right now in our sport.” Reese stayed in Rohnert Park until he was 14, went to Rancho Cotate High School, lived in Santa Rosa for nine years, Cotati for another five, all the while wedded to pole, water and fish.
For people interested in fishing here in Wine Country, some good spots include:
- Lake Sonoma (catch bass, panfish, poison oak)
- Russian River (catch steelhead, salmon, minor contact buzz)
- Hana Rohnert Park (catch uni, hirame, all near the golf course Skeet first fished as a kid)
