Neenah is almost surrounded by water: Lake Winnebago on one side, Little Lake Butte des Morts on the other, and the Fox channel running between them. Nearly every property in the city is near something wet.
Most of it is not breeding mosquitoes.
Open water is a bad nursery
This is the reframe that makes the problem tractable. Mosquito larvae need water that is shallow, warm, still and fish-free. Lake Winnebago is none of those things. Wind drives waves across it, the waves disturb the surface, and the fish eat what survives.
The channel does not produce either, because it moves and larvae cannot complete development in current.
What does produce:
- Sheltered, weedy, shallow margins out of the wind — a quiet bay, a vegetated edge, a pocket behind a breakwall
- Little Lake Butte des Morts, which is shallower with more quiet vegetated edge, and so contributes more per acre than the big lake
- Everything holding rainwater on your own lot
The last of those is almost always larger than the owner expects.
Lake flies are not mosquitoes
Worth separating, because people pay for the wrong thing.
The midge and mayfly hatches that come off Winnebago in huge numbers do not bite, are not mosquitoes, and cannot be meaningfully treated — nothing sprayed on a building affects a hatch emerging from open water. Screening and lighting changes help; a mosquito program does not.
Mosquitoes are a different animal with a different answer. They breed on land, in standing water, and they genuinely do respond to source reduction and harborage treatment.
Doty Island and the near-channel lots
Island and near-channel properties sit close to slow sheltered water on more than one side, and the older housing there tends to carry mature trees and dense plantings — which is harborage.
Neither is unmanageable. It does mean the treated band on an island lot usually runs most of the way round the property rather than along a single edge, which is worth knowing when comparing quotes.
The on-lot list
The part you control, and the part worth clearing before paying anybody:
- Gutters, clogged — most common source in Wisconsin, least often checked
- Corrugated downspout extensions holding water in the ribs
- A tarp over the boat, trailer or woodpile
- Plant saucers, buckets, wheelbarrows, bin lids, tires
- A birdbath nobody empties
- The low patch of lawn that stays soft a week after rain
On a waterfront lot, add the boat cover, a canoe or kayak stored open side up, and the dock bumpers. A week of undisturbed water is the entire life cycle.
Where the treatment goes
Into shaded vegetation, where adults spend daylight: shrub undersides, dense ground cover, tall grass at the lot edge, the shaded side of the house and outbuildings, any wooded margin.
Not the open lawn. The treated band regularly looks nothing like the patio where you were being bitten, and that is what a correct application looks like.
About the drive
We are in Clintonville, roughly thirty-five minutes north. For scheduled seasonal work that is a non-issue. For a same-hour emergency, a Fox Valley company will reach you first and you should call one rather than wait on us.
More detail in the mosquitoes profile, in mosquito and tick control, and — for waterfront and greenway lots — in the tick and Lyme yard program.