Summary:  Feels like spring, nice one day and blustery the next.  Change abounds, and this is a good thing. Instincts are triggered, patterns reset; the fish are mobile.

STRIPED BASS:  Boaters are getting them all over San Pablo Bay, though more from the Marin side from McNear's to Hamilton.  It's tough on a shoreliner unless the water is decently high. And the stripers continue to amaze anglers from Benicia to the middle of the Suisun.  Cut bullheads and nothing else, according to some boaters, will bring in some big fat linesiders. Again, pretty sad for the state of the banks, but at least we can take heart that the fish are coming down our way.  Nothing wrong with throwing out some bait so long as your expectations are reasonable.  Get out and get moving early on with a box full of lures and try to be the source of the hot rumors.  Sure beats chasing them!

STURGEON:  Sturgeon?  What's that?  Good thing there are pictures of them to look at when the memory fails.  Nothing out there worth recommending now, with the exception of some so-so chances upriver.  Word has it that you have a hope if you can navigate the muddy marshes at low tide at Sonoma Creek and Napa River above the Highway 37 Bridge.

PERCH: It's mostly about one at a time, with some long waiting in between.  There have been sporadic bursts of pogie and pile action at Berkeley Pier, on little white jigs more than bait, but it's slow elsewhere.  If you want the big perch, fish the rock ledges of either tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Low water is the best time, especially when the incoming tide has just begun.  Large rubberlips are in and you might as well get them now because this is the last month for perch in the Bay until August.   The surf has barred and walleye and lots of high waves.

MISCELLANEOUS SPECIES: The halibut are coming in from the Golden Gate.  Keepers have been taken off Berkeley Pier on live shiners, though this is not a trend yet.  More common are the smallish guys chomping lures on sandy beaches like Crissy Field, shy of legal by several inches.  Rocky areas have cabezon within the boundaries of the bay and definitely outside the Gate, yet most of these will be small males.  A keeper or two per day come out of both towers' rock walls.  Fort Baker has small but frisky lings smacking into swimbaits and hair raisers.  Not much happening with rockfish.

FRESHWATER:   Trout plants this week at  Shadow Cliffs, Chabot, Del Valle, Lafayette, Contra Loma and Lagunitas.   Now is the time for freshwater enthusiasts.  Bring some Power Bait in chartreuse, orange or rainbow.  Glitter won't hurt.  With the solid weather and constant trout plantings, limits are common for those who get up early.  Kastmasters and Rapalas are also having success.  For black bass it's still too cold, though plastics are effective in the morning. Striped bass fishing is getting better in Del Valle and Contra Loma, however.  Try cut fish baits or lures.

DELTA RUMORS:  Faster outgoing tides, faster runoff (natural or pumped) and strong winds have taken the joy down a few notches.   Best prospects are hit and miss, but listed because they've yielded fish: Isleton to Walnut Grove on the east side of the Sacramento River for sturgeon on a variety of baits.  Sloughs and backwaters on the California 12 and Interstate 5 corridor for striped bass on live minnows.  Panfish by bridges in the same area and also in the southern sloughs between Old and Middle rivers.  Catfish are a few per hour on clams and fishy baits everywhere.  Black bass fishing seems most productive smack in the middle around the Franks Tract area, with Senkos and other plastics stirring up a largemouth or two.