“How many minnows you want?”

Sixty-eight-year-old Bob Rutledge has probably put that question a thousand times to a thousand different people from every imaginable walk of life, from yuppies to blue collar stiffs to poor laborers.

For 28 years, he’s been selling bait and dispensing wisdom from his little store in a dilapidated neighborhood on South Chester Avenue.

It’s called Bob’s Bait Bucket, and if you’re looking for a live critter to put on a hook or feed to a pet, it’s the place to go.

But it turns out there’s a lot more to Bob’s Bait Bucket than bait and tackle and fishing advice.

For the mostly minority residents of the neighborhood, it’s a community institution, a kind of free speech zone where conversations take place on a first-name basis.

Call it The First Church of Bob.

“This is a place where you can interact with people and learn about people and interact with psychology,” Bob said.

And, like any fisherman worth his salt, customers tend to come early, where they can find him alone from 6 to 9 a.m. “every day except Christmas.”

That’s also the time to catch Bob at his sharpest. A lifetime of fishing has given him an early morning clarity that most harried professionals only dream about.

He had something personal to say to nearly every customer on Tuesday morning.

“Hello, Cleo!” he said, as an older black man walked in. “You missed out yesterday.” He had called Cleo’s aunt to tell him about some fish he’d caught, but the message hadn’t gotten through and Bob gave the fish to someone else.

Cleo Calloway met Bob 20 years ago, and he’s been a regular ever since.

“Yeah, we was a lot younger then,” said Cleo.

When asked for an interview with The Rip, he was reluctant.

“Uh, I don’t know about that,” he said, looking to Bob for reassurance. “That all right?”

“Yeah, go ahead and give him your name,” Bob said.

That kind of personal touch has won him a loyal clientele that has grown from a circle of fishermen to include exotic pet owners and local schools.

Bob now has nine employees and a second store at Niles and Morning Drive.

“I’ve had people ask me over the years, ‘how can you make a living selling worms?’ Well, I sell a lot of them,” he said.

He got the idea in 1977 listening to his gambling buddies complain about not being able to find live bait.

“I thought I could provide it, and I did,” he said. “Now all the guys I’m gambling with who are getting my money, they come down here and spend their money with me.”

Though the shop sells a variety of fishing gear, people mostly come in for live bait.

And they aren’t all fishermen. A lot of Bob’s money comes from providing bait in bulk for school projects and keeping exotic pets like salamanders and geckos happy.

Still, he says, there’s more to life than selling bait.

“I’m still a young man,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of time, I think.”

Young enough to be finishing up a culinary arts degree at Bakersfield College, where he is enrolled in an algebra class alongside students less than a third his age.

That’s right, culinary arts. He said he and his son were planning to open a restaurant together in 1993, so they started taking cooking classes at BC. That fell through when his son became a police officer.

Bob, who said he’s a “really good” cook, just decided to keep taking more classes. He doesn’t see any end in sight to his quest to become what he calls an “educated businessman”, whether he passes algebra or not.

“There’s so many things I don’t know that I want to find out about,” he said.

And, if you can believe him, he’ll be behind the counter of Bob’s Bait Bucket every morning for a long time to come.

“(I’ll retire) probably in the next 20 years or so,” he said.

Bob Sound Bites

Q: What do you think of the war in Iraq?

A: I believe that we went for the wrong reasons, that we are protecting interests other than national interests. I also believe that war should be fought by men 60 years and older and not by 20-year-old kids.

Q: Really? Why is that?

A: Why waste 20 year old kids? Sixty-year-olds haven’t got that much potential left anyway. Hell, put ’em out, let ’em do all the fighting. They’re the ones that caused all the problems.

Q: What do you think of having to pass algebra at BC?

A: Algebra’s kicking my butt, there’s no doubt about it. But if I couldn’t pass it, I wouldn’t want to graduate.

Q: How do you feel about the fee increases over the last couple of years?

A: Well, it’s unfortunate, but everything goes up. One thing that really does bother me is somebody wearing a damn $100 pair of tennis shoes and $50 Levi’s and talking about a $2 increase in fees. Now that’s bullshit.

Q: What’s your favorite movie?

A: “The Birdcage”, with Robin Williams.

Q: What would you say to someone who’s never gone fishing to get them to try it?

A: Fish live in generally beautiful places, and fishing’s a good excuse to be there.