MISQUAH — The walleye have gone a little sullen at midday on the Chain, as they tend to once the water climbs past sixty-five, but the evening bite on Big Pelican remains, in the considered judgment of the cleaning station behind Tim’s, “honest.”

Best results have come in the last hour of light, off the deeper edges of the gravel bar in eighteen to twenty-two feet, on a leech and a slow drift. The midday crowd has mostly given up and gone for panfish, which is no insult: the bluegills are on the beds in two feet of water and will keep a child, or an adult who admits it, busy all afternoon.

The northern pike, meanwhile, have gotten aggressive in the cabbage on Sandy Lake — hammer-handles mostly, but the occasional fish “worth the steel leader,” as one regular put it. Vern Dahlquist reported a pike he called “a good one,” a characterization his wife Eunice, present, allowed to stand, which regular readers will recognize as significant.

A reminder, with the loon chicks now on the water: the no-wake zones near the nesting areas on Big Pelican are in effect, and the loons, Tim notes, “were here first, and have the chicks to prove it.” The store opens at 5:30 a.m., and the leeches, he adds, “are lively this week, which is more than I can say for the walleye at noon.”