Despite last weekend's record-setting warmth and sunshine, we're just a week into May. Snow has melted off lawns in the Anchorage Bowl, and winter-weary anglers are looking for some place -- any place -- to wet a line. But fishing season is very much in its infancy:

• Ice is off most area lakes, including the often-productive Kepler-Bradley system in the Valley. Casts are being made; boats are being launched.

• Just one halibut, a 47-pounder landed by James McGinty of Philadelphia, has been entered in the Homer Jackpot Halibut Derby, which opened Friday. Thousands of flatfish will be caught there by summer's end.

• Hooligan dippers have yet to see many of the oily candlefish in their nets at the mouth of Twentymile River.

• Ice still covers Lake Louise near Glennallen, a reliable spot for lake trout in late spring, and Lake Louise Lodge owner John Delaquito doesn't expect it to go out for another three weeks. "We got two inches of snow today," he said Wednesday morning, "and it's still snowing."

• The season's first Alaska Department of Fish and Game sport fishing report for Anchorage has so little to offer it's delving into gossip. "Rumor has it that a king salmon or two has been spotted already in Ship Creek," it says -- before warning anglers the expect "slow at best" fishing.

Still, there are places offering more than casting practice for early season angling addicts.

Fish and Game says that arctic char fishing is often hot in Campbell Point and Sand Lake soon after ice is out, and hungry rainbow trout are cruising the shallows in many city lakes. Bead-headed nymphs can be effective.

Twelve Anchorage-area lakes will be stocked this summer -- Campbell Point, Clunie, Delong, Fish, Green, Gwen, Hillberg, Jewel, Otis, Spring, Triangle and Walden -- so pick wisely.

In Resurrection Bay, halibut in the 20- to 30-pound range are being caught as the fish start heading back to shallower water. Trollers are finding a few king salmon too, from the harbor to the headlands.

Rockfish and gray cod are available in the bay too. This season's rockfish limit is four per day, and only one may be a non-pelagic rockfish. Non-pelagic rockfish are those that stay close to shore or underwater structures on the continental shelf. Pelagic rockfish roam the high seas.

In lower Cook Inlet, halibut are starting to move too, and anglers are catching them on herring, octopus, squid and salmon heads. Fish the slack tides to avoid needing heavy weights to hold the bottom.

For about two weeks, some anglers have targeted king salmon in a corridor between Anchor Point and Deep Creek about a mile offshore. Trolling the south side of Kachemak Bay has been less successful.

By the end of next week, kings could start nosing into Homer's Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon.

Mat-Su anglers are already testing area lakes.

"Ice was only off parts of most lakes this weekend, but it should be gone now," said Steve Runyan, manager of Three Rivers Fly & Tackle in Wasilla. "Fishing is very good -- as it usually is right after ice-out -- for rainbows, dollies and grayling. That stretch of hot weather over the weekend opened things up."

Fish and Game fisheries biologist Samantha Oslund from Palmer was driving between Mat-Su lakes Wednesday afternoon, checking on conditions. She noted that Long Lake in the Kepler-Bradley system was particularly good for catch-and-release rainbow fishing. Black patterns were working well, she said.

"People are out fishing hard in the Valley," she said, while noting that Wasilla Lakes was still frozen and Finger Lake was only half open.

Anchorage anglers got good news this week when Fish and Game reported that pesticide applied to Cheney Lake in October in a effort to wipe out invasive northern pike appears to have succeeded.

On Monday morning, a Fish and Game crew set out a dozen nets to see if any fish survived the application of rotenone. So far, said regional management biologist Matt Miller, they've yet to net a pike, though one live blackfish turned up.

The effort continues through Friday. Officials are asking residents to keep dogs under control near the Baxter Road lake and not risk entanglement with the nets.

If no pike are found, Fish and Game plans to start stocking the lake with rainbows at the end of the month. The non-native pike wiped out Cheney Lake trout and have decimated fish in a variety of Southcentral waterways.

"We've gotten an overwhelmingly favorable response from the people living near Cheney Lake," Miller said. "A lot of long-time residents want to get back rainbow fishing."