Category Archives: News

News from around the lake.

21 March 2022: Ice Out Update

20220321_092112-1Last Friday, only 4 days ago, there were people out on Clary Lake ice fishing. Today there is a sizable portion of open water on the north side of the lake, easily visible in this picture taken this morning. You can just barely make it out on Clary_cam-1 as a thin dark line in the distance. High northwest winds forecast for today will push that open water further towards the south shore. We’re still quite a few days, away from open water. 

Here are the 2022 Ice Out Contest guesses. Good Luck Contestants! Continue reading →

13 March 2022: Early Spring Dam Management

20220309_110621-MediumWe’ve begun our Spring management activities with the aim of getting Clary Lake filled up for another boating, fishing, and swimming season, about week earlier than usual because of all the snow and rain we’ve been blessed with this year. Our spring management includes adding stop logs to the weir to start raising the lake level to it’s spring high while opening the gate to increase outflows to maintain minimum flows, and also to keep the lake from rising too quickly. It’s a balancing act made more difficult with having to second guess the weather. Because of drought conditions the previous 3 years, it has been a challenge raising the lake level in the spring while at the same time maintaining outflows. We pretty much have the opposite problem this year! After the first two months of 2022 we’re 2.5 inches of precipitation above normal for this date. The picture shows Steve Cowles on March 9th cranking open the gate the other day, with Dave Knight standing by with the folding ruler. There are 4 threads to the inch on the screw, so opening the gate 12″ means turning the gate wheel 48 turns. That’s a workout. Today, we installed the last two stop logs in the weir. You can track all the action on the 2022 Dam Operation Log.

06 March 2022: Clary Lake Ice Out Contest Closed to New Entries

I have closed the 2022 Clary Lake Ice Out Contest to new entries. 36 people have made their guesses (below). Now, we wait… for ice out. I have no idea what the No U-Turn sign has to do with anything.

Good Luck Contestants!

2022 Ice Out Guestimates

These are the guesses for ice out. The timestamp column will be used to decide on who was first in the event of a tie. Hint: you can sort on any of the columns by clicking on the header:
TimestampYour name:Ice Out Guess:
02/27/22 09:43 AMSophie Seba03/23/22
02/27/22 10:45 AMJack Holland03/24/22
02/27/22 11:01 AMVicky Grimaldi03/25/22
02/27/22 11:30 AMDan Burns03/30/22
02/28/22 10:13 AMSteve Relyea03/30/22
02/28/22 08:35 PMHillary Relyea03/31/22
02/27/22 01:03 PMRonnie Spann04/01/22
02/27/22 03:13 PMLinda S Gallion04/01/22
02/27/22 02:41 PMRob Rowland04/02/22
02/27/22 08:45 PMTim chase04/02/22
03/01/22 09:27 AMCathy johnson04/02/22
03/04/22 11:51 AMcarolyn curtis04/02/22
02/27/22 05:00 PMMalcolm Burson04/03/22
02/27/22 09:36 AMKaren Stutzer04/04/22
02/28/22 05:47 AMGeoff McCullen04/04/22
02/28/22 08:06 AMThurlow Crummett04/04/22
02/27/22 01:41 PMJune m Lordi04/05/22
02/27/22 09:31 AMBill Hall04/06/22
03/01/22 09:26 AMBambi Jones04/06/22
03/03/22 03:55 PMMary Gingrow-Shaw04/06/22
02/27/22 12:23 PMGayle Knight04/07/22
02/27/22 06:52 PMSteve Cowles04/08/22
03/03/22 03:49 PMAmanda Knight04/08/22
02/27/22 12:19 PMKate Seba04/09/22
02/27/22 08:27 PMDonald Hogg04/09/22
03/01/22 10:32 PMBen Gerdts04/10/22
03/02/22 09:12 AMDavid Knight04/10/22
03/04/22 10:10 AMStephen Viti04/11/22
02/27/22 11:42 AMArlene Wing04/12/22
02/27/22 09:54 AMBeverley Bowen04/13/22
02/28/22 05:24 AMCary McCullen04/15/22
02/28/22 05:26 AMGeoff McCullen04/16/22
02/27/22 09:21 AMSara Roy04/17/22
03/03/22 01:11 PMGareth Bowen04/18/22
03/01/22 11:23 AMCheryl Smith04/20/22
02/27/22 08:16 PMThomas vigue04/21/22

2022 Ice Out Contest Guestimates

Still contemplating your 2022 Ice Out Contest Guestimate? Well, you can agonize over it for only a few more days! I’m planning on closing the contest to new guesses in two days, at the end of the day on Saturday March 5th. Below is the list of ice out guesses received so far, who guessed, and the date guessed sorted by guessed date. Not confusing at all! Here’s a link to the original post with the contest rules and prizes. I’ll keep this page updated. Good Luck!

2022 Ice Out Guestimates

These are the guesses for ice out. The timestamp column will be used to decide on who was first in the event of a tie. Hint: you can sort on any of the columns by clicking on the header:
TimestampYour name:Ice Out Guess:
02/27/22 09:43 AMSophie Seba03/23/22
02/27/22 10:45 AMJack Holland03/24/22
02/27/22 11:01 AMVicky Grimaldi03/25/22
02/27/22 11:30 AMDan Burns03/30/22
02/28/22 10:13 AMSteve Relyea03/30/22
02/28/22 08:35 PMHillary Relyea03/31/22
02/27/22 01:03 PMRonnie Spann04/01/22
02/27/22 03:13 PMLinda S Gallion04/01/22
02/27/22 02:41 PMRob Rowland04/02/22
02/27/22 08:45 PMTim chase04/02/22
03/01/22 09:27 AMCathy johnson04/02/22
03/04/22 11:51 AMcarolyn curtis04/02/22
02/27/22 05:00 PMMalcolm Burson04/03/22
02/27/22 09:36 AMKaren Stutzer04/04/22
02/28/22 05:47 AMGeoff McCullen04/04/22
02/28/22 08:06 AMThurlow Crummett04/04/22
02/27/22 01:41 PMJune m Lordi04/05/22
02/27/22 09:31 AMBill Hall04/06/22
03/01/22 09:26 AMBambi Jones04/06/22
03/03/22 03:55 PMMary Gingrow-Shaw04/06/22
02/27/22 12:23 PMGayle Knight04/07/22
02/27/22 06:52 PMSteve Cowles04/08/22
03/03/22 03:49 PMAmanda Knight04/08/22
02/27/22 12:19 PMKate Seba04/09/22
02/27/22 08:27 PMDonald Hogg04/09/22
03/01/22 10:32 PMBen Gerdts04/10/22
03/02/22 09:12 AMDavid Knight04/10/22
03/04/22 10:10 AMStephen Viti04/11/22
02/27/22 11:42 AMArlene Wing04/12/22
02/27/22 09:54 AMBeverley Bowen04/13/22
02/28/22 05:24 AMCary McCullen04/15/22
02/28/22 05:26 AMGeoff McCullen04/16/22
02/27/22 09:21 AMSara Roy04/17/22
03/03/22 01:11 PMGareth Bowen04/18/22
03/01/22 11:23 AMCheryl Smith04/20/22
02/27/22 08:16 PMThomas vigue04/21/22

Bangor Savings: Community Matters More!

Here’s a great opportunity to make a difference in your community: The Bangor Savings Bank Foundation will give more than $155,000 to 45 local nonprofit organizations in Maine and New Hampshire. In celebration of their 15th year of Community Matters More, the one nonprofit that receives the most overall votes will be awarded a $15,000 grant! You can vote for 5 nonprofits:

https://www.bangor.com/community/community-matters-more

Far be it for me to tell you how to vote because there are a number of worthy nonprofit organizations doing good work in this area that could use some financial help including the Clary Lake Association! Other notable local nonprofits doing good work are the Whitefield Library, the Jefferson Area Community Food Pantry, the Whitefield Food Pantry, and the Whitefield Historical Society.

Cast your vote today for your favorite nonprofits!

Maine Lakes Fall 2021 Newsletter Is Out

Maine Lakes (formerly the Maine Lakes Society) has posted their Fall 2021 Newsletter and as usual, they’ve done a fantastic job of highlighting Maine Lakes and the issues they face. As usual, they cover a lot of ground. I found section 3 Recovering Loon Years Lost: Maine’s New Loon Stewardship Project to be a particularly compelling read, seeing as how loons are a prominent aspect of summers on Clary Lake. Our loons haven’t successful raised a family in quite a few years; the last time they actually managed to hatch any chicks was in the summer of 2018 (see: 27 June 2018: Loon Family Pictures) and sadly, both babies unaccountably disappeared by the 4th of July (see: 04 July 2018: Loon Chicks Missing). They nested again in 2019 but failed to hatch any chicks and we have not seen our loons attempting to nest since, a situation which is both highly unusual and quite disturbing.

A preliminary screening has identified 99 Maine lakes to be included in the Loon Stewardship Project. Clary Lake is not on that list, but ultimately, ALL Maine lakes will be considered and we look forward to participating in this program in whatever ways are deemed appropriate. Stay tuned for more about this interesting and important initiative.

floating_loon_nestThe CLA has a history of trying to foster loon nesting on Clary Lake. Back in the spring of 1999, the Clary Lake Association built and launched a floating loon nest. It disappeared after a while and it isn’t clear if the nest was ever actually used by anything besides turtles. The nest, which we thought was lost, turned up again a couple of summers ago (see: 03 June 2020: Floating Loon Nest Found After 21 Years).

There is loads more of interest in Maine Lake’s latest newsletter including an excellent write up about the LakeSmart program, something which should be of interest to all of Clary’s lake shore owners. I hope you take some time to read this newsletter! Here’s a link to the Fall 2021 Newsletter in HTML format:

If you prefer you can view a printable PDF version

The Clary Lake Association has been a supporter of Maine Lakes for a long, long time and continues to offer our financial support to this important organization.

19 November 2021: Live Stream the Clary Cams!

You’ve always been able to live stream the Clary cams IF you were technically savvy enough to install the right plugin in your browser or conversant with a program like VLC. It certainly wasn’t easy and I suspect most people have been content to simply look at the pictures that are updated every 2 minutes rather than deal with trying to get a live feed working. I’ve recently added all 3 Clary Cams to the IP Cam Live website which takes the H.264 compressed video stream from a  camera and converts it to MPEG format which most modern browsers can display without special plugins. Yay!!

The pictures that are displayed on the website are beautiful 1920 x 1080 pixel images (like the one above). The live video feed uses a HD stream with a resolution of 720p and a bit rate of 512K. Not the highest resolution and not as nice as the still pictures, but certainly pleasant to look at. One reason for choosing this live stream format is the bandwidth requirement is lower. Two of these cameras (1 & 3) feed through my internet connection and I don’t want it to bog down. You may still see “buffering” message from time to time, depending on how many people are viewing the stream.

You’ll now find “Live stream in your browser” links for each camera on the Webcam page. Here are the links:

Clary_cam1: Live Stream in your browser

Clary_cam2: Live stream in your browser

Clary_cam3: Live stream in your browser

I’m interested in your feedback! Send me an email (or use our Contact Form) and let me know what you think of the streams, and if you’re having any issues.

 

14 November 2021: Clary_Cam1 Replaced

Clary_Cam1 has been acting up in recent weeks and has been difficult and at times, impossible to connect to though it continued uploading pictures. It finally died quietly without a whimper last night. Fortunately I had a brand new identical spare camera on hand so I was able to replace it today without difficulty. It wasn’t quite a drop in replacement, but almost. I’ve also confirmed that the remote live connect to Cam1 and Cam3 is working, assuming your browser supports/trusts the Foscam plugin. Cam2 resides on a different network so I’ve not been able to tweak the router settings to allow remote connections. C`est la vis. I also haven’t gotten the VLC connections working again and probably won’t.

The Webcam Pages on this site are very popular! In 2020 the page was view 2691 times and so far in 2021 it has been viewed 3431 times. There are better cameras out there with more features that are easier to view live. I’m researching this.

Exploring Lake Phenomena: Langmuir Circulation

From time to time I like to highlight different lake phenomena, and today’s high winds and waves are a great opportunity to discuss Langmuir Circulation. The waves today are really stirring up the water, it’s brown and quite turbid and there are long lines of white froth on the water aligned with the wind direction. I’m sure you’ve seen this phenomena before. You can see those lines of froth in the webcam picture at left. Sitting here in my upstairs home office and looking out the window down at the lake, those lines of white froth are very evident. Continue reading →

September 2021 Water Level Chart Archived

9 Clary-Lake-Water-Level-September-2021I have archived the September 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). September was on track for being an average, ho-hum kind of month with more or less normal rainfall (for a change!) and a stable unchanging water level until the 27th when we received a whopping 4.5 inches of rain in one storm. This sounds like a lot, and it was a lot, but it only brought the lake up 0.89 feet, from -1.02 feet below the HWM to just -0.13 feet below it. While this sounds like a lot, it’s actually a runoff multiplier of only 2.4X and considering how much rain we’ve had this summer, I expected the lake to have come up a lot more. By all rights we should have had water pouring over the full width of the dam but in fact we just had a wee bit dribbling over the top in a few spots. I won’t say I was disappointed, but I was surprised! The old rule of thumb is that an inch of rain should bring the lake up 4″ (a 4X multiplier) and if that rule had held true, the lake would have risen 18 inches instead of only 10 inches. For that matter, we’ve actually seen runoff multipliers considerably larger than 4X in the past. Continue reading →

17 August 2021: Milfoil Returns to Cobbossee Lake

Variable Leaf Milfoil, Pleasant Pond, Litchfield Maine.

Eurasian Water-Milfoil was discovered in  Cobbossee Lake in 2018 (see our post dated August 8, 2018: “Invasive Milfoil Confirmed in Cobbosseecontee Lake“). The following year Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection treated several areas of the lake with an herbicide in an attempt to kill off the invasive plant. They were optimistic that the treatment would be successful because the infestation was limited (so they thought) to roughly an acre between the north shore and Island Park. Sadly, the following year Milfoil was again discovered in several areas adjacent to the original infestation, which is where this Central Maine Papers newspaper article picks up. Please read it! It paints an ugly but accurate picture of  the situation they’re facing trying to eradicate this unwanted aquatic plant: Continue reading →

15 June 2021: Trapping Browntail Moths

How to tell male from female Browntail Moths.

While killing Browntail moth caterpillars is easy and may make you feel better, it’s problematic for a variety of reasons. First, it gives you the sense that you’re doing something to rid yourself of the Browntail problem when in reality you’re probably not making a dent at all in the caterpillar population. If you just spray them with soapy water, sure it kills them, but then you’ve got dead caterpillars with their toxic hairs laying around your yard. I did that last month, fanatically wandering around my deck and yard with a spray bottle of soapy water in each hand, shooting caterpillars like some madcap wild west gunslinger. Of course, I got the rash on my arms and neck. Then I put aside the spray bottles and took up a tin can with some soapy water in it and kitchen tongs and went around picking the caterpillars up and dropping them in the can. More rash. Now that the caterpillars have begun pupating, I’ve been searching for the nests, cutting down those that I can reach with my tree pruner, and soaking them in a bucket of soapy water. Is this helping? I sure hope so, but I have my doubts. Continue reading →

10 June 2021: Birds In The Marsh

An American Bittern, one of the birds heard during the birding trip into the marsh. (stock photo).

Last Saturday, Steven Viti, Nancy DeWall, and myself, Malcolm Burson, took a two-hour paddle up into the Clary Lake marsh to see what birds were around. We started over on the floating bog where the blueberries grow where we got good looks at Eastern Kingbirds, Yellow Warblers, and Purple Finch, all of which are likely breeding there, and we heard a Veery singing. As we worked our way into the marsh, we heard a call with which I wasn’t familiar; later detective work led to the conclusion that this was a Marsh Wren, a species I hadn’t observed before at Clary. A zig-zag to the other side, beyond the island, produced a Swamp Sparrow, a regular breeding species here. We watched a Great Blue Heron fly across the north end, and once we headed that way, heard an American Bittern, possibly a return to breeding territory that I heard every evening last year closer to the main body of the lake. Continue reading →

25 May 2021: Rough Water on Clary Lake

Early Sunday afternoon on May 23, 2021, a strong cold front blew in from the north. Behind it were high winds that lasted all afternoon and into the night. We took it on the nose on our location on the south shore of Clary Lake. For a while I thought my boat would ride it out OK but it was taking a beating and I decided to move it over into a protected cove… It made for a pretty hairy ride, I wish I’d had the foresight to do it sooner!

Here are a couple of webcam pictures from that afternoon. Continue reading →

23 May 2021: Relax, It’s Tree Pollen!

pollen-campic

Tree Pollen on Clary Lake

While this looks similar to the end stage of an intense algae bloom, it’s really only plant pollen. One telling difference is the color: this stuff is decidedly yellow whereas dead cyanobacteria is bright green.  I suspect it’s pollen from White Pine though I’m not sure. In any case, it’s a natural phenomena and there is no reason to believe pollen has an impact on water quality though for a short time it can impact lake water transparency. While it looks ugly, it is of a short duration and will eventually disperse into the water column and sink. Another difference between pollen and algal blooms is the timing: pollen events happen in the Spring whereas algae blooms are typically a mid-to-late Summer and early Fall phenomena. Here are a couple of pictures of cyanobacteria on my shoreline taken in October of 2013. The color is decidedly different:

img_3897-custom img_3896-custom

The more you know!

The Newsletter is In The Mail!

No really! It’s in the mail which means the Clary Lake Association’s 2021/2022 Membership drive has begun! Traditionally, it begins with the mailing of the Summer newsletter which went in the mail a few days ago. Most of you should have it in your mailbox by now, or will have shortly (I’ll post a digital copy here in a few days). Unofficially our Membership drive begins on April 1st which is the date we start accepting dues for the upcoming year. In reality, it’s never too soon or too late to join or renew your membership in the Association. We’re always ready for new members! Dues are $25 per person per year and Membership is open to all. I’ve added a page to the site to keep track of who has signed up for the Upcoming Year. At the time of this writing there are already six people who have renewed their memberships. You’ll find the list under the Current Membership List, under the Membership Menu. Continue reading →

Free Fishing Mother’s Day Weekend

Cast a line and celebrate the special moms in your life

Mother's Day free fishing license weekend May 8-9

During Mother’s Day Free Fishing License Weekend, May 8-9, 2021, everyone is encouraged to cast a line and enjoy Maine’s many waterways with the special moms in their life.

On these days, any person (except those whose license has been suspended or revoked) who registers may fish without a license. All other laws and regulations apply on these days. 

This free fishing license weekend is in addition to the semi-annual free fishing weekends. June 5-6, 2021 is the next scheduled free fishing weekend.

We hope you have a memorable weekend fishing with the special individuals in your life. Remember to be safe: tell someone where you are going, and when you plan to return, and ALWAYS wear a life jacket when on the water – the water is extremely cold this time of year.

Register

25 April 2021: Diminishing ice cover on Maine’s lakes could impact fish populations

Lake Auburn. This picture links to the article.

Here on Clary Lake we haven’t been keeping ice in and ice out records for long enough to see a shortening of the iced-in period. Our records go back to 2001 and in that time, there’s no obvious trend but over significantly longer periods (many decades and longer) it’s clear that Maine winters are gradually becoming milder and anyone who’s lived around here for more than a few years can testify to that fact. This article in the Kennebec Journal discusses some of the impacts of shorter iced-in periods on Maine Lakes.