Vintage Great Lakes Angler : Aluminum Boat

From the Life Archive.

I've made it Black and White day here in the Great Lakes Angler's Studio. Monotone for February First.

This photo reminds me of many of the boats I've used on small Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota and brings back memories of hot aluminum seats, creaking oars, and soft boat cushions.

Ginger Rogers : Life Magazine Cover

A photograph from 1942, actress Ginger Rogers holding fly rod as she sits on ground while taking a break from fly fishing on her 1,000-acre ranch in the Rogue River Valley.


I wonder how many actresses these days own a 1000 acre ranch to fly fish on... I would wager not many.

Google Life Collection : Great Lakes Angler

Tonight I made a bit of discovery using google image search. If you type into the search bar : source:life "xxxxxx" anything you want, it will search their newly scanned archives of all of the Life Magazine articles and feed you the images associated with the articles it finds.

Thus a search of "source:life greatlakes" will get you images of the great lakes from articles from decades ago, which makes for some great images that you have likely never seen.

I naturally tried "source:life wisconsin" and found this beautiful trout stream image.

Here is another from "source:life greatlakes"

Finally this great image of "the Swanson family" on Oak Street Pier with a trot line out for yellow perch. This image was taken in 1950.

Have a look yourself, you might enjoy it.

Classic Great Lakes Angler : Fossil Edition

While reading through this issue of LIFE Magazine on Google books I ran across this article.

Text as follows:

"The fossil skeletons of a fish within a fish give 90 million-year-old record of a glutton"

"Ninety million years ago a 14-foot-long tyrant fish called Portheus swam through the great shallow sea that covered what today is Kansas. Like its distant modern relative the tarpon, Portheus was a fierce predator, armed with a bulldoglike lower jaw for lunging at prey from below. It came upon a 6-foot-long herring-type Ichthyodectes and proceeded to swallow it whole. This huge wriggling repast may have been too much for the ravenous Portheus. At any rate, it died with its belly full. Then it sank heavily into the sea ooze, where it became fossilized in the clay while the Cretaceous American Sea vanished about 70 million years ago. Uncovered under the dry land of a cattle ranch near Quinter, Kan., this skeleton-within-a-skeleton, vivid evidence of the reward of gluttony, is believed to be the most ancient fish-eat-fish record ever found intact."

The fossils were discovered by Walter Sorenson of the American Museum of Natural History.

It was a fast swimmer, as the forked tail and streamlined body show. Probably would have put up one hell of a fight on a 12 weight fly rod.