The second full week of fishing season has brought the Chain into its proper rhythm: boats on Big Pelican before breakfast, coffee at Tim’s by midmorning, reports of selective fish by noon, and the first confidently contradictory theories before supper.

Tim Brevik estimates several hundred anglers visited the Chain over the opener stretch and the days that followed, though he cautioned that counting anglers is like counting blackbirds. “You can do it,” he said, “but by the time you finish, half of them have moved and the rest deny they were there.”