Photo of the Month: March 2010
March Photo of the Month: Fish Tug Entering Kenosha Harbor, Lake Michigan, Kenosha WI
This month’s photo comes from my first weekend visiting Kenosha back on the 3rd of March, 2008. This interesting boat is a fish tug, a boat that’s native to the Great Lakes. This fish tug was first created for the commercial fishing industry in the 1930′s. It was designed to stand up to the challenging conditions found on the Great Lakes year around. There are three fish tugs currently in Kenosha Harbor, this was my first encounter with one.
I was out photographing the ice and slush of the harbor when , to my surprise, I heard a boat horn from the lake. I thought I was hearing things. No way was there a boat out there amongst all that ice. Then I saw it. I quickly changed lenses and got four shots fired off before the boat was by me. This image is my favorite of the four.
At the time I had no idea what this boat was, but after some searching online I was able to learn more about the fish tugs and their importance to the fishing history of the Great Lakes. If you’d like to know more about fish tugs, here’s a great source: Fish Tugs of the Greatest Lake
Beautiful. I remember how cold I felt the day you took that photo.
Yeah, me too
I grew up in Saugatuck MI. in the fifties. I lived on the Kalamzoo River and used to watch them breaking their way through the ice as they went out in the winter. A schoolmate’s father owned one of them. I also remember there nets drying on large “looms” in the summer.