FOUND: Trout’s sign recovered, now back home in Bakersfield

It seemed like the old sign would always be there overlooking the well-known night spot on North Chester Avenue. The image of a thrashing fish, the lure of "cocktails" and "dancing," and in big capital letters, TROUT'S, drew customers into the interior of the Oildale honky-tonk for decades.

Then one day in May 2017, the Trout's sign was gone. And soon, so was Allan Thomas Rockwell, the man who had operated Trout's Nightclub for years.

Despite searching, despite tips and rumors from well-intentioned residents, despite public pleas and an offer of a reward — and despite a fire that destroyed the building in 2022 — the whereabouts of the sign remained a mystery.

Until now.

At a news conference held Friday afternoon in the maintenance building at Kern County Museum, an elated Mike McCoy, executive director of the museum, told reporters the Trout's sign had been located in rural Tuolumne County, where Rockwell had surfaced years ago.

Thanks to moral and financial help from local museum supporter Chris Hayden and serious and relentless sleuthing by private investigator Paul Lopez of Raptor Investigations, McCoy said, the sign was found leaning against the rear of a rural farmhouse in the mountainous county.

"He is extremely methodical and energetic," McCoy said of Lopez, the investigator. "I went up to Tuolumne with Paul two weeks ago. He burned through a lot of shoe leather."

Lopez brought decades of experience in law enforcement to the task, McCoy said.

And while restoration of the sign will be extensive and will take an estimated five months, it is now in its new home, the Kern County Museum, he said.

"The sign is our property, legally," McCoy said.

Will Stuart, president of Thurman Investments Inc., the building owner, had always held that the sign should rightfully remain in Bakersfield, so his company made a gift of the fish to the museum.

"Rockwell did not benefit from what we did today," McCoy told The Californian late Thursday night as he and the museum's Maintenance Director Eddie Valdez hauled the sign back to Bakersfield in a big rental truck after a long but fruitful day.

"Rockwell doesn't even know right now that we have it," McCoy said.

The iconic Oildale honkytonk was a country-music-and-cocktails destination in Oildale for many a year. Its stage was graced by the likes of Red Simpson, Oscar Whittington, Bobby Durham, Eugene Moles, Theresa Spanke, Harold Cox, Johnny Barnett, Brian Lonbeck, Tommy Hays, Larry Petree and dozens of other local music makers.

It was sometimes billed as the last authentic honky-tonk in Bakersfield, and tourists from Europe and Japan would occasionally stop in to experience the flavor of such a place.

But in its latter years, Trout's was clearly on the downhill side.

When the sign and Rockwell disappeared, the owners of the building said they wanted it back.

"They hadn't made a payment for close to a year," Stuart told The Californian in June 2017.

A theft report was made to local law enforcement in July of that year, but the trail soon grew cold.

Many locals also wanted the sign back. When the empty building went up in flames in April 2022, nostalgia for the old neon sign that had long since stopped glowing may have grown even stronger. Many believed the sign belonged somewhere in Bakersfield.

On Thursday, McCoy rounded up several friends who live in Tuolumne County. The museum director was a school district superintendent there in another life, and the men helped McCoy and Valdez move the big sign, which McCoy said weighed at least 800 pounds.

"When we finished, we went out and had a celebratory beer at the Rawhide Saloon in Jamestown, Calif.," McCoy said.

It was a job well done.