Allegheny Almanac

Canoeing in Warren, PA wins National Competition for 2012

For an unprecedented 5th time, the United States Canoe Association will hold its national competition in Warren, PA. The announcement appeared on the Allegheny River Competitive Paddlers web site yesterday.

The event is usually held in early August and is held from the Kinzua Dam to Betts Park in downtown Warren as well as Chapman Lake in Clarendon, PA.

 

The national competition sponsored by the USCA is in addition to a yearly canoe and kayak race which is currently scheduled for July 16 this summer.

 
Photos by Chris Lareau. Copyright protected.

 

Related Links on this web site:

 

Canoeing and Kayaking the Allegheny River and Kinzua Lake

 

Book Review: Allegheny River Paddling Guide

 

Book Review: Books about hiking the Allegheny National Forest

 

Camping In and Around The Allegheny Wilderness

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pennsylvania State Fishing Championship September 23 to September 26

Carnival starts in Tidioute at 12 noon on Sunday! Champion Anglers named at 3 p.m.!

 

If it's Fall, it's time to start fishing around here.

How's the fishing? Not too bad if one four-day period last year is any indication. That's when anglers from all over descended on the tiny village of Tidioute and weighed in 832.18 pounds of fresh caught fish: Muskies, Bass, Trout, Walleye, Northern Pike, and even a 10-pound Catfish.

And that was only the live fish caught during the last weekend in September. Dead fish don't count in the state's annual championship fishing tournament because it is a catch-and-release contest.

From the tailwaters of the Kinzua Dam and Allegheny Reservoir (aka Kinzua Lake) all the way down the river to Tidioute, population 792, contestants caught 20 Northern Pike, 2 Musky (many fishermen spend a lifetime without catching one of these), 70 Walleye, 222 Bass, 35 Trout, and that 10-pound Catfish. And those were the ones that were keepers.

Warren County has been sponsoring the state championship for 51 years now, but the tradition goes back all the way to the native Americans who established a fishing village in Warren, Pennsylvania long before anyone had even heard of its namesake, General Joseph Warren. It's a cultural thing. Kinzua Lake is named after an Indian town now under water after the river was dammed in 1966. Kinzua is a Seneca Indian name that means "water of the big fish" or "fish on a spear," depending on who you have translate it for you.

In addition to the huge catfish, last year one fellow caught a 10-pound Northern Pike. It's not surprising. The state's record Northern Pike and record Walleye were caught right around here.

For more information on the state's fishing tournament, visit the website at http://www.pascft.com/results.html. For general info on fishing in the area visit TheAllegheny.com.

Historian from Warren, Pennsylvania featured on "History Detectives" TV show

Warren Area High School alumnus Timothy Michael Gay (Class of 1972) returns to Pennsylvania on television Monday night (August 23) at 9 p.m. on PBS. He is a featured expert on the popular "History Detectives" show which this time is investigating a very special baseball game played at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field.

"It was fun to tape (at PNC Park in Pittsburgh) and hopefully won't be too humiliating," the sports historian and former Warren track star wrote to his friends on Facebook this week. Like anybody else he's a bit nervous about his national debut: " If things don't turn out too well Monday night, I'll be entering the federal witness protection program."

In case you miss the 9 p.m. Monday airing, you can watch the show in its entirety at the History Detectives web site at this link. The documentary focuses on one baseball game played on October 8, 1946 at Forbes Field, the former home of the Pittsburgh Pirates and now a part of the University of Pittsburgh's main campus.

The segment of the show is called "Jackie Robinson All-Stars" and relates a special promotional game with the Jackie Robinson All-Stars taking on the Honus Wagner All-Stars. Games like this one had particular appeal to the baseball public because, before integration, fans could not see white and black ballplayers in the same game. Six months after this game, Jackie Robinson was signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African-American to play in either the National League or the American League.

For more information on the show, see an article at a Pittsburgh news web site: "History Detectives" Episode about Forbes Field and an article at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Timothy Michael Gay is the author of two critically-acclaimed books on baseball history, "Satch, Dizzy and Rapid Robert" (published by Simon and Schuster) and "Tris Speaker: The Rough-And-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend" (published by the University of Nebraska Press).

The author's latest book "Satch, Dizzy and Rapid Robert" was reviewed by the New Republic magazine, which you can read at this link: Race To The Plate. Tim Gay's first book was previously reviewed at this web site which you can read at this link: Rebel With A Cause.

He will also appear in Warren on September 3 at 3:30 p.m. to talk about his work. For more information, visit the Warren Library Association's web site at this link: Warren Public Library.

--compiled by Chris Lareau