MISQUAH — Mid-August is the most honest fishing of the year. The lake has stopped pretending, the fish have committed to their program, and anyone still fishing June patterns is out there proving a point to himself. The walleye are deep — eighteen to twenty-four feet on the main-lake structure, tight to the break — and the bite has moved to the ends of the day with real conviction. First light and last light. In between, you are visiting.

Crawlers have taken over from leeches, as they do about now. Panfish are sliding off the shallow weeds toward the deeper edges, which makes them harder to find and better eating. Northerns are in the cabbage and are in a mood. The smallmouth sulk continues, and I have stopped taking it personally.

From the Bass Lake file: a third report, Thursday evening, one boat this time, describing “something long” that surfaced twice and left. The witness is a man I have fished with for thirty years and have never known to embellish anything except the price of gas. I am not calling it a muskie. I am noting that the file now has three entries, that Bass Lake has never held the record, and that the record is 53 inches and has stood since 1998.

Water temps are holding at 72 to 74. But the nights are cooling and the light is coming later, and Thursday morning I saw the first small raft of ducks moving that means what it always means. There is a lot of summer left. There is not, however, all of it. Fish the mornings.