01 April 2021: Trouble With Squirrels

Wait. What?

I suppose this sounds like an April Fools post. I wish it was! To be honest, I had considered a gag post for April 1st but couldn’t round up the gumption to do it. So here I was, minding my own business when I noticed that for the past hour or so, Clary_cam1 had not been uploading pictures. Rebooting didn’t help and I couldn’t connect to it with my phone. So I went to look it over and found that a critter, most likely a squirrel, chipmunk, or maybe even a mouse (given the size of the tooth marks), had chewed the end of the wireless antenna off (picture at left) allowing rain to get inside and shorting it out. Harrumph. Well it turns out the manufacturer used essentially the same antenna on this camera as on the old cameras, so I was able to swap out the antenna with a working one. Problem solved. You’re welcome! Continue reading →

March 2021 Water Level Chart Archived

March 2021

I have archived the March 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). Precipitation was again slow to accumulate in March and we ended the month with only 2.00 inches of rain, well below the monthly average of 3.77 inches. Despite the lack of snow pack and the lack of rain, we did succeed in filling the lake before the end of the month, and on pretty much the same date as last year. We did this by adding one or two stop logs, gradually raising the lake level (the black dashed line on the chart represents the height of stop logs in the weir). The dam’s gate was closed for the entire month and was only opened 1 foot on the 30th in anticipation of a significant rain event on expected on April 1st, no fooling! Filling the lake in the spring is made easier when there is more water to work with; we were able to do it this spring largely at the expense of meeting the minimum flow requirement. We started the month with the lake level down -1.15 feet below the HWM and ended up on March 31st with the lake at -0.20 feet below the HWM with a little water running over the dam. The ice went out on March 29th. Continue reading →

29 March 2021: Clary Lake Ice Out Videos

Some years, ice out on Clary Lake can be pretty dramatic and I like to put together videos using photos from our webcams. Here are two such videos from this year. The first one, from Clary_cam3 includes pictures from one day, March 27th. The second from Clary_cam1 includes pictures from 3 consecutive days starting March 25th and ending at nightfall on the 28th. You can watch them on the website, but I recommend you view them full screen on YouTube. Enjoy.

Lots of ducks in this one, they come for the corn my wife feeds them.

Ironically, the “official” ice out date for Clary Lake this year occurred a day after these two videos, on March 29th.

29 March 2021: Ice Out!

Ice Out 28 March 2021

I’m calling the OFFICIAL Clary Lake Ice Out date today, March 29th. I’m also calling yesterday the “What Do You Mean It’s Not Ice Out Yet?” day, yesterday, March 28th. This morning there are only a few vestiges of ice remaining and I’m sure the sun and wind will make short work of them today. We therefore have 3 winners of our 2021 Clary Lake Ice Out contest: Bambi Jones for guessing the “official” Ice Out date, and Kelley Doore and Alan Nicholas Decker for coming the closest to the “What Do You Mean It’s Not Ice Out Yet?” date of March 28th without going over. Fortunately we have enough “We Give A Dam” tee shirts to go around and I’ll be in touch with our winners to make arrangements to get them their shirts 🙂 Continue reading →

27 March 2021: Close But No Cigar

Not yet folks. Close, but as the saying goes, no cigar. Our criteria for ice-out is when there’s no ice left along the shore line, at least not enough to interfere with a boat or canoe. There’s still a good amount of ice on the south shore on what used to the the Antogoni property as you can see in this picture at left. Below is a panorama photo I took showing the extent of the ice. There’s also ice remaining in some coves on the south shore but this is the biggest extent. I expect *maybe* the ice will be all gone sometime tomorrow. Time will tell.

Full Sized Panorama

25 March 2021: Ice Out Update, It’s Getting Close

It’s getting close folks. I got an email from David Hodsdon this morning saying that he saw 6 loons yesterday in a spot of open water at the point near his house. Compare the picture at left, taken just a few minutes before Noon today, with the one I posted yesterday! A lot of open water out there…

2021 Clary Lake Ice Out Contest

Here are the names of people who entered the contest and their guestimate of when Ice Out will occur.

Your name:	What day do you think the ice will be completely off Clary Lake?
Kathryn Ference	03/22/21
Alan Nicholas Decker	03/25/21
Kelley Doore	03/25/21
Bambi jones	03/29/21
Ronnie Spann	04/01/21
Des FitzGerald	04/01/21
Stephen Viti	04/01/21
Beverley Bowen	04/01/21
Andrea Antognoni	04/01/21
Malcolm Burson	04/02/21
Karen Stutzer	04/02/21
Carolyn Curtis	04/02/21
Leslie Gillette	04/02/21
George Fergusson	04/03/21
Tara Doe	04/03/21
Stan York	04/04/21
Ray Martin	04/04/21
Jack Holland	04/04/21
Donhogg	04/04/21
Jay Bridgforth	04/06/21
Stephen Viti	04/06/21
Steve Relyea	04/07/21
Gareth Bowen	04/07/21
Paul Devlin	04/07/21
Karren Briggs	04/07/21
Stephen Viti	04/07/21
Ellis Percy	04/08/21
Steve Cowles	04/09/21
Rich & Megan Luisi	04/09/21
Thurlow Crummett	04/09/21
Tom Lawton	04/09/21
David Knight	04/10/21
Dan Burns	04/12/21
Mark Doe	04/13/21
Richard Gallion	04/14/21
Linda Gallion	04/15/21

24 March 2021: Ice Out Update

Ice Out approaches and it’s now looking like it’ll go out sooner rather than later. The ice is getting decidedly darker and this morning there is an odd brown stain over a large area that is visible in the Clary_cam3 photo at left. This warm weather is really wreaking havoc with the ice! Below is a Clary_cam2 photo from this morning showing a good deal of open water right on shore, and a large open lead heading off towards the boat launch. Also, it wasn’t that long ago that a few of us adventuresome people were driving our cars around on the lake. Steven Giampetruzzi sent me this picture of him and his Scoobydoo parked out in front of his camp, and Clary_cam2 caught me cruising by the day before:

23 March 2021: Maine IF&W Soft Plastic Lure Survey

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife has put out a survey on the use of soft plastic fishing lures in Maine waters. These lures are particularly popular with Bass fishermen, and I use them myself. However, if you’re not using them and disposing of them correctly, they can constitute a hazard to fish. If you fish with soft plastic lures, please consider taking this survey. If you want to know more about soft plastic lures and how to use the correctly, here’s a great link with lots of information about soft plastic lures: Fishing with Soft Plastic Lures.

The following is an excerpt of an email that I received today with a link to the survey: Continue reading →

09 March 2021: IF&W Issues Invasive Species Alert

I was talking with a friend the other day about different ways that invasive plant and animal species can find their way into Maine lakes. One common way that doesn’t immediately come to mind is summer visitors dumping their aquariums including potentially invasive plant and animal species into a lake or pond at the end of the vacation season. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife sent this PSA around today:

mefishwildlife.com

Attention home aquarium owners:

moss ball and moss ball display at pet store

Left: a moss ball, Right: display of moss balls for sale at a pet store

Invasive zebra mussels have been found in “moss balls,” an aquarium plant product sold in Maine. Moss balls are commonly sold under trade names such as “Betta Buddy.” Zebra mussels, which so far have not become established in Maine, are one of the most destructive invasive species in North America.

If you recently purchased moss balls, immediately destroy them using one of these methods:

Freeze – Place the moss ball into a sealable plastic bag and freeze for at least 24 hours.
Boil – Place the moss ball in boiling water for at least 1 full minute.
Bleach – Submerge the moss ball in chlorine bleach for 20 minutes.

After destroying the moss ball, DISPOSE of the moss ball and any of its packaging in a sealed plastic bag in the trash. Do not dump moss balls down drains or in waterways or gardens.

If moss balls were placed in your aquarium, DRAIN and clean the aquarium:

Please remove fish and other living organisms and place them in another container, with water from a separate, uncontaminated water source.
Aquatic plants may also harbor zebra mussels and should be destroyed along with the moss ball.
Sterilize the aquarium water by adding 1 cup of bleach for each gallon of water. Sterilize filter, rocks, décor, and any other items in contact with the water.
Let the water sit for 10 minutes and then dispose of the treated water down a household drain.

Thank you for doing your part to keep this invasive species out of Maine’s waterways.

08 March 2021: A Year In Pictures Revisited

One of the gotchas from going to SSL was that a number of images associated with website posts were broken. Having a little time on my hands this morning, I set about going back through old posts and editing the URL’s to fix the broken images. In the process of doing that, I came across this post from 4 years ago with a video composed of Clary webcam pictures, and I decided to repost it.

The video covers 365 days from March 9, 2016 through March 9, 2017. There are a few days missing (including 3-13-16 through 3-15-16 which coincided with ice out last spring for some reason, and a couple of other days in the fall). I also decided to delete all the night-time photos, ending up with 4,651 pictures covering Clary Lake in all its glory, compiled into a video at a frame rate of 10/second. It is 7:45 long. Best viewed full screen with the sound on:

03 March 2021: CLA Secretary Driving His Car on Clary Lake

A couple of short videos I took while out driving my Subaru on Clary Lake today. The ice was pretty rough. At 16″ thick it was plenty solid, but rough. If it was smoother I’d probably still be out there.

Continue reading →

01 March 2021: Your Connection is Secure!

It has been a long time coming, but our website now supports SSL (secure socket layer) browser connections. This means that your website traffic between our server and your browser is encrypted on-the-fly. In a world that is becoming increasingly more security (and privacy) conscious, it was really only a matter of time before we were forced to take this step. You can tell your connection to our website is secure from the lock () to the left of the URL in the address bar. Also the URL starts with “https” and not “http.” We’ve been planning on installing an SSL certificate for some time but lacked a real incentive to do so, the primary reason being cost. I’m happy to report now that the cost of purchasing an SSL certificate has dropped considerably in recent months such that it was really no longer Continue reading →

February 2021 Water Level Chart Archived

February 2021

I have archived the February 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). Precipitation was slow to accumulate this month but a rain/snow storm on the 27th finally pushed us to 2.67 inches for the month, just a hair above the February average of 2.61 inches. Year to date however we’re still the better part of an inch below normal and without any snow pack to speak of, we are looking at a drier than usual Spring. Most of Maine is not in drought this winter but there are some areas on the coast not far south from here that are considered “abnormally dry.” A lot can (and probably will) change between now and April. Continue reading →

We’re Having Some Technical Difficulties!

Well we WERE having some technical difficulties installing an SSL cert on the site and getting all the redirects working. We’re up and running now. Thanks for your patience, and thank you to those who pointed out busted stuff!

23 February 2021: Spring is Coming!

It’s about this time of year that I really start hankering for Spring, and I’ve been watching the progress of the Sun anxiously as it rises a little further northward each day. By the time the Vernal Equinox on March 20th gets here, the point where it crosses the Earth’s equator on it’s way north, it will be rising well to the left of where it rose this morning:

12 February 2021: Maine Cabin Masters on Clary Lake

A camp on Clary Lake belonging to the Andersen family was featured on Maine Cabin Masters this winter. The camp is over on the west shore of the lake. I recall the camp being worked on last summer, and more than once I waved at the folks working on it while out fishing. At the time I didn’t know it was a Maine Cabin Masters project and I didn’t learn that until long after they were gone. I also lost track of this project and didn’t know when it was going to air or I’d have posted about it sooner.

Check out the Maine Cabin Masters post. The before and after pictures are impressive, and the 3D model is pretty sexy 🙂

603 – The Old Fishing Camp

Many thanks to Dan Burns for bringing this to my attention.

Clary Lake: Fun For All Ages

Dave Knight sent me this video this morning which I decided to post on Facebook, then decided to embed here which is exactly backwards. Hopefully it won’t double post on Facebook 🙂

Albert R. Boynton May 18, 1926 – January 31, 2021

Albert Boynton, 1926 – 2021

I was very much saddened to hear of Albert Boynton’s recent passing. Albert was intimately familiar with the Clary Lake dam and the Clary Mill which his family owned and ran back in the 1920’s and early 1930’s. I first met Albert when I was just 13 years old when his house caught fire, back in 1966. Water from the mill pond next door was used to save his house, something he liked to point out to people. I have spoken with him often in recent years about the dam and mill and how they factored into the lives of his family.

In early 2018 the Clary Lake Association was in the process of raising money to buy the dam, and Albert made a generous donation towards that end. I took the picture at left in the late fall of that year, after we had successfully purchased the dam. It shows Albert standing next to the red mill house in which he was born, talking with our Treasurer Mary Gingrow-Shaw one day while dam repairs were underway. Albert lived just across the road from the dam and he was a frequent visitor during that exciting period. He was thrilled that the Clary Lake Association was finally able to buy the dam and restore Clary Lake. Albert has been a Clary Lake Association member for a number of years, and an unending source of stories about Clary Lake.

He will be remembered, and he will be missed.

Here is Albert’s obituary: Albert R. Boynton May 18, 1926 – January 31, 2021

This article has been posted under Members No Longer With Us which you’ll find under the Membership main menu heading.