GREAT SACANDAGA LAKE — About two-thirds of the sites at Northampton Beach state campground are either submerged or too wet to use, but the facility and four others opened on schedule Friday.

Early-season campers are hardy — and traditional, too.

Fourteen members of the extended Scarano clan from Little Falls gathered at Northampton, and some planned to stay through Wednesday. They came from as far away as Newport, R.I.

The lure? Walleye.

“The main objective is the fishing, not the camping, but they go hand in hand,” Fred Scarano Jr. said as the men set up camp.

“We’ve been coming here for 40 years, and my father and his buddy came here 20 years before that,” Rock Scarano said.

“Our dads brought us, and now we’re bringing our kids. It’s been a family thing for 60 years,” he added.

Rock Scarano said the water level is the highest he’s seen and the group seems to get pushed farther away from the point because of flooded-out campsites each year.

“We were afraid that it wasn’t going to open,” Fred Scarano Jr. said.

Not far away, Mimi and Larry Sisario of Tribes Hill were lounging beside their trailer in the rainy, 45-degree weather.

“You can’t miss opening day,” Larry Sisario said, adding that he and his wife haven’t missed one in 20 years.

“We’re always here,” Mimi Sisario said. “We don’t camp when it’s warm. We come up here and freeze.”

Larry Sisario said he got rid of his boat because of the price of gas and fishes from shore now. But they do have the luxury of the trailer.

“You gotta have heat,” he said.

His wife chuckled at the thought of tenting.

“Getting a little too old for that,” she said.

The campsite’s beach is under water, but the boat launch is open and the Dobbs family of Colonie was preparing to launch their 291⁄2 foot Regal cruiser.

“It’s a short season. You have to get it in as soon as you can,” Lisa Dobbs said as her 6-year-old daughter Lindsey modeled a life vest on board.

“She’s known nothing else but boating,” Lisa Dobbs said.

Husband Bill Dobbs said the family used to boat on Saratoga Lake but prefers the Great Sacandaga.

“It’s awesome,” his wife added. “Our neighbors say, ‘Look at the money you’re spending on gas.’ This is what we do. This is our summer vacation.”

It sure didn’t feel like summer Friday.

“We’re dedicated,” Bill Dobbs deadpanned.

Chris Cahill, a conservation operations supervisor in Northville, said the campground floods every year when the lake — a flood-control reservoir — fills.

“Every year, we go through this. It’s an annual event,” he said.

About 80 of the campground’s 224 sites were usable, he said. Only 30 are available for reservations.

“The other 50 are first-come, first-served because if it rains hard, they could flood again,” he said.

“We’ve had a few campers coming in, just a few,” he said. “It’s weather-related.”

Along with Northampton Beach, Department of Environmental Conservation campgrounds at the Lake George Battleground and Rogers Rock, Wilmington Notch near Whiteface and North-South Lake near Tannersville opened Friday, according to David Winchell, a spokesman for the DEC.

Fish Creek near Saranac Lake opened April 11, and Winchell said all of the others will open May 16. State boat launches in Broadalbin and Northville are also open for the season.

The DEC operates 52 campgrounds in the Adirondack and Catskill forest preserves.