MISQUAH — There is one week a year when this Chain empties out, and it is fair week, and if you are the sort of person who would rather fish than watch a demolition derby, it is the best fishing of the year. Thursday morning I had the whole east side of Big Pelican to myself. Not a boat. Not one.

The fish get comfortable when nobody is stirring the water, and the walleye bite reflected it: the deep structure produced steadily all week at eighteen to twenty-four feet, and I had fish come up shallower in the evenings than they have since June, which is a thing that happens when a lake is left alone for five days. Crawlers. Slow. Nothing clever required.

Water temperature came down to 68 by Sunday with the rain, which is a real number and worth writing down: 68 is when the fall pattern starts thinking about itself. The panfish are still on the deep weed edges and eating well. Northerns are getting aggressive, as they do when the water starts down.

Sunday it rained on the derby and it rained on the lake and it rained on the exhibit pickup, and Monday morning it was 51 degrees at six a.m. and I wore a jacket and did not feel foolish about it. That is the first honest cold morning of the year. There will now be a stretch of them, and then some warm days that will fool people, and then it will be September.

Fish the mornings. There are four more weekends of summer, and one of them is Labor Day, and after that this lake belongs to the people who live here.