Cisco Chain, Vilas County

Just spent a week on the chain 6/4 through 6/11. Water temps were 68 (in Thousand Island) when we arrived and dropped to 63 after some cold and rain, then were back up to 68 when we left. I would say weeds are further along than normal for this time of year (some even to the surface already). Pads are coming along but about average I would say. The channel from Thousand Island to Big Africa was about average with a fair amount of pads grown in.

Water was a little less clear than we were used to. Thousand Island was fairly dark and, even on Big and Morely, where we find it's usually very clear, it was a little cloudy. We saw a lot of pollen and seeds on the surface in these lakes, which must be contributing to the cloudiness.

FYI for anyone regarding bait - Jay's Resort on Thousand Island sells bait. Crappie minnows were $2/dozen and they had leeches, crawlers, wigglers (which I suspect are done by now), and whatever else you might need. They also sell fishing licenses for anyone needing that. I'm surprised they don't advertise this fact more since they're basically the only game in town for this stuff on the Michigan side of the chain.

As far as fishing goes, we did OK but not great. We missed the bite by about 2 weeks we figure, based on fishing reports we were able to find. Crappie and perch were done spawning. Some bass were spawning but they weren't terribly active. The mayfly hatch was starting so things were turning off and I suspect have turned off perhaps even more now. We did see the usual ton of people on Cisco fishing for perch everyday so I suspect they were still fairly active (we didn't target perch so I'm not sure).

Mosquitoes weren't terrible nor were the biting flies. Once night fell the mosquitoes got a little worse but definitely not as bad as we've seen in the past.