THE WEEKLY SHORELINER'S REPORT
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 Summary:  Colder weather has helped move sturgeon and striper and all but stopped the perch.  The bite has been very slow all week and could better with the added vigor of the tides--but the wind is going to be a real bear in the next few days.  Dress warmly and fish deeply.

STRIPED BASS:  It's been quite lately--too quiet!  The stripers haven't all fled upriver, though it seems that way now.  Better tides and clearer water will see the bite improve on live bullheads and lures like Hair Raisers and Rat-L-Traps.  Lousy fishing from Emeryville to Richmond, spotty luck from there to the Carquinez.  On the other side of the bay, it's a little better and anglers are still getting lucky at Point San Quentin and the China Camp area.  Crabs are very thick throughout the Bay System and especially bad upriver form San Pablo Bay.  Use bobbers with your bait or be resigned to losing most of it to the mitten monsters.

STURGEON:   People are getting interested in the area behind the Chinese restaurant at Emeryville Point.  That's usually an indication that things are starting to happen.  And if not that, then all the jumping diamondbacks in San Pablo Bay might have produced some adrenaline. The regulars haven't shown up yet at Point Pinole, but that will change soon.  Other spots to investigate now would be Grizzley Island Road out of Fairfield (Montezuma Slough Bridge or a little further along at the turnouts by the pier at what used to called Red Barn), Vallejo at the Maritime Academy, or across the bottleneck to Crockett, and Port Costa.  Rain has put them on the move.

PERCH:   It's one black perch at a time, no schools, on pile worms or any bait in the East Bay.  White perch are in better quantities (cast about 20 yards out)  on the Berkeley Pier and surrounding Marina, but still nothing to get excited about.  Across the bay, both towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are seeing rubberlipped, striped, walleyed, and shiner perch, with the rock walls of Fort Point and Fort Baker faring better than the nearby piers.  The ocean shoreline has not seen too many anglers lately.

MISCELLANEOUS SPECIES:  Kingfish rule the muddier waters, with the odd jacksmelt, shark or even diehard ray on the lower tides.  Halibut have pretty much gone and the flounder haven't rolled in yet.

FRESHWATER: Trout planted at Shadow Cliffs, Del Valle, and Chabot.  Trout are moving into shallower depths and taking marshmallows, cheese, nightcrawlers and PowerBaits, mostly in the red to purple hues.  Keep the bait just off the bottom if you can.  Black bass fishing is spotty.  Everything else has slowed down.  Though the Marin lakes have not been planted since summer, now is the time to start thinking about going to them: less people and prettier scenery can't hurt the fishing experience.

DELTA RUMORS:  This is the place to be for salmon--at least until Sunday, November 5, and then it's over for legal red meat fish. Isleton through Freeport has been the range for shoreliners throwing Mepps and Blue Fox.  Stripers are all over the delta, many of them enormous.  The usual hot spots in the north remain Sherman Island up to Rio Vista on shad, jumbo minnows (better than mudsuckers lately because they don't hug the bottom and get eaten by the mitten crabs), salted sardines, and blood worms.  Rat-L-Traps, Broken Backs, and spinners have worked for both stripers and black bass.  In the south, Middle River and its connected sloughs have been the better spots for striped bass on much the same baits as the north.  Still catfish around, though most of the activity is going towards stripers and sturgeon.  Sturgeon fishing is good at Cache Slough and better at Sherman Island on  shrimp baits.