[Backwater]

My brother and I fished the Cisco River Chain of Lakes during the week of September 19-26th, and we had a great time together, but the fishing was not very good. The lakes we fished included Record Lake, Big African Lake, Thousand Islands Lake (the largest & deepest), Lindsay Lake, Fishhawk Lake, and Cisco Lake. All of these lakes are connected with narrow weedy rivers. The lakes are reputed to be good for Walleye, Muskie, Pike, Largemouth, and Smallmouth and have plenty of structure (including unmarked rock domes that rise in the middle of the lake), deadfalls, weedy flats, etc. The weather was clear, cool, and sunny most days, and the high skies and bright sunlight may have been a factor, but the biggest problem we had was locating fish

We caught a boatload of 10"-20" largemouth bass and a few small mouth fishing shoreline deadfalls with boppers and minnows, and the lakes were full of decent sized perch and bluegill, so it would be good for kids, but the only walleye we caught were a few dinks hiding out along weed lines.

We tried trolling spoons, spinners, rapalas, etc along weed beds and shoreline but only caught a few smallmouth (all under 18"). We tried trolling deep for walleyes with weighed reef runners, bandits, spoons, worm harnesses, etc but could not find any suspended fish on our chart plotter. Occasionally we spotted small pods of walleye on the bottom along points or in deep water, but they weren't biting on minnows or leaches.

We stayed in a cabin at the the Wilderness Bay Resort on Thousand Islands Lake (near Watersmeet, MI and the facility and the owners were great. Each cabin had its own dock with electrical hookups. They told us that the State of MI doesn't stock any of these lakes. The resorts themselves sponsor annual Walleye stockings, but the Covid fiasco prevented them from stocking anything this year. We did catch a few midsized pike, and had several musky follow our lures up to the boat, and we saw another boat land a 30"-40" musky.

The area is beautiful and we had a great time catching dinks and spinning stories from our childhood, so it was a great trip even if the fishing was less than what we had hoped.

 

[Ranger6]

I spent every summer, in my youth, at Sylvania wilderness. You are correct, it is a beautiful place up in that area. In all, I probably spent 10 summers up in that area canoeing and fishing all the wilderness lakes. In all those years I never caught a walleye. The only lake I fished in common with your trip would have been Thousand Island lake. I will say the bass fishing up there was incredible. Took my two boys up about 10 years ago for them to experience and see if was as I remembered. While the area stayed the same, the popularity of the area had definitely exploded. On my trips when I was younger I might not see anyone for a week. When I took the boys, every camp site was full and canoes everywhere. I can say that the bass fishing did not disappoint though. We could catch 100 fish every day. My trips when I was younger had about 50% smallmouth, 50% largemouth. When I went up with the boys we only caught a few smallmouth. All the bass we caught that week were on soft plastics, fished on structure. All of the bass fishing is catch and release so we would throw some crankbaits for small northerns for dinner.