When I started this blog, it was before the Corona Virus hit Pennsylvania. I had planned on traveling all over the Clarion 120 Outdoors, but I find myself staying closer to home. I am not paranoid about things, but I do not want to be stupid about them either. I just am more comfortable staying with situations that are familiar.
Normally, our family takes a trip to Pigeon Lake in the Kawartha region of Ontario over the week of July 4th. We take all the cabins in the same campground and go the same week every year. I know it is not in my 120, but some of the family have been carrying out this tradition for over 60 years. And there is something to be said for tradition. But the border is closed, so we are doing family things here, in the Clarion 120. On Pigeon each morning I am up early, grab a cup of coffee and sit on the porch waiting for my son to emerge from his cabin across the way, right about 6:00. I join him and we climb into my boat and hit the lake before most of the camp is awake. Then in the evenings, my daughter joins me for an evening muskie hunt. Last year, he caught a 48 inch muskie in the morning and she got her first muskie that evening. A great day!
Our daughter came to Clarion this year, her first trip from her home in Long Island since Christmas, thanks to the virus. So this year, on my birthday, which falls in that week, we substituted our Kawartha routine with a local muskie hunt. My daughter, my son, and I headed out to Tionesta Lake in Forest County to give it a try. It isn’t Canada, but as I told you in a previous blog, I enjoy Tionesta Lake. It is where I caught my first muskie. And it is familiar.
It was an extremely foggy morning on the lake, which made it an extremely picturesque morning on the lake. We fished three of my favorite spots, spots that have produced fish in the past. All three of us cast continuously for about 3 hours, but the muskies were not playing, as is the case so many days with them. The lake was oddly tinged with mud. I thought that to be unusual, since it has been sometime since we had any rain at all, but I don’t think that had anything to do with our lack of success.
There were a few people camping, but most were not awake when we started fishing, so we only ran the electric. There is a campground beside the outflow of the dam if you do not want to camp on the lake. The lake sites are all primitive. As you can tell from the pictures, the lake is undeveloped. It is a flood control lake and the dam was built in 1940 as a part of the system of dams that control the water flow in the Allegheny River, primarily to keep Pittsburgh from flooding. Thus, there are times when water levels get exceptionally high when the water is being held back, but the summer pool level is pretty constant. No need to worry. The camp sites are all well maintained and the Army Corp has them all cut and ready to go. We will do a two night camp out with the grand kids before the summer is over, but I am going to wait for it to cool down first. It was headed toward 90 degrees the day we were there, so about 10:00 we called it a day and got off the lake before it was too hot and the power boat traffic started.
The only event of the day was when we left. I fired the boat up and headed out full speed….the wrong way in the no wake zone. Oops. It was the kind of thing that my father became known for doing in his elder years and one of the kids might have said something about feeling like they were with Grandpa. Like the time he showed up for the first day of deer with his gun, his lunch, and his orange bibs on backwards. Were he still with us, he would have been along. A great memory to end a great morning.
The virus and the border being closed created some disappointment for us all this year. But we ended up spending a great deal of time together doing things that we do not do in Canada. A day at the lake is a good day anytime you have good company. And a a day like that in the Clarion 120 Outdoors is as good as a day anywhere.
Hope to see you in my 120, the Clarion 120. If not, get into your 120.
Clarion 120 Outdoors 
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