Sandfilling and Breakwater Extension, Great Lakes, 1936. You can see the distinctive horse shoe at the end of the pier.
Showing posts with label Montrose Harbor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Montrose Harbor. Show all posts
May 10, 2013
Creation of Montrose Point, 1936
Sandfilling and Breakwater Extension, Great Lakes, 1936. You can see the distinctive horse shoe at the end of the pier.
June 10, 2012
Lake Front Fishing, Uptown Chicago
We would walk down to Montrose Harbor and buy our bait from "C. Berry for Bait," an old green shack on the northeast side of the harbor. All of our fishing equipment came from there. We could buy a one piece 16 / 18 foot cane pole, a two piece 12/14 foot, or what us professional guys used, a three piece 14/18 footer. One of our prized possessions was an official C. Berrry Bait Can, which was in reality an unused paint can with 6 or 7 nail holes punched in the top.
It cost us a quarter and we had it forever. Styrofoam hadn't been invented yet. A mandatory piece was our Coleman Gas Fired Lantern. For a nickel's worth of white gas at the gas station, we could fish all night. We tied a length of clothesline to the handle of the lantern in order to lower down to the water, usually about two feet above. This helped attract the perch in to our poles, and gave us light when baiting our trolley set ups.
For bait, the Lake Michigan shiner was the best, followed by fat heads, peelers, or softshell crabs, which were really cray fish. We would rip the tail off, peel away the shell, and impale the white meat on the hook. Sometimes we would use small pieces of shrimp. Worms never worked that well on the horseshoe.
I would fish all night, come home in the morning with a stringer of 50- 60 perch. Our tackle box was for the most part an old cigar box.
We would scrounge all of our gear and rarely bought any. I invented a type of hook-dragging device which was an old clothes hanger cut and bent into a circle with 10" lengths of hanger with bent hooks at the end, alternating with one hook up and one hook down until I had 10 lengths. I would throw this out into the lake and let it settle to the bottom, then slowly retrieve it back, snagging anything it came in contact with: hooks, line weights, sun glasses, and a few rods and reels.
A neat old guy named Mr. Service used to come out at sunup with his cart, "HOOOOT COOFFEE," and rolls; then at lunchtime he sold sandwiches and pop. I went to school with his son Jim and always felt sorry for him that his dad had to sell hot coffee for a living. Today I would love to have that concession. When Jim went to high school his dad bought him a car.
The water level on the lake always fluctuated, as far as I can remember, then when Harold Washington was mayor, there was high water and flooding going on along Lake Shore Drive. Some of the lobbies in buildings and LSD was flooded.
The mayor convened a committee to figure out how to keep Lake Michigan from flooding the City. So experts said we had to open the locks and drain the water into the Mississippi; the people down south said if you flood us we'll sue. Another said if we drained a billion gallons a day it would take 10 years to get the level down.
Now mind you, no one was asking the real experts, the Lake Front Fisherman. The following week the water level returned to normal, all the "experts" went home, and no one had an answer as to why.
God and Nature handle things pretty well; all we have to do is stay out of the way. It's a system that has been working up to now.
Bill Matteson
It cost us a quarter and we had it forever. Styrofoam hadn't been invented yet. A mandatory piece was our Coleman Gas Fired Lantern. For a nickel's worth of white gas at the gas station, we could fish all night. We tied a length of clothesline to the handle of the lantern in order to lower down to the water, usually about two feet above. This helped attract the perch in to our poles, and gave us light when baiting our trolley set ups.
For bait, the Lake Michigan shiner was the best, followed by fat heads, peelers, or softshell crabs, which were really cray fish. We would rip the tail off, peel away the shell, and impale the white meat on the hook. Sometimes we would use small pieces of shrimp. Worms never worked that well on the horseshoe.
I would fish all night, come home in the morning with a stringer of 50- 60 perch. Our tackle box was for the most part an old cigar box.
We would scrounge all of our gear and rarely bought any. I invented a type of hook-dragging device which was an old clothes hanger cut and bent into a circle with 10" lengths of hanger with bent hooks at the end, alternating with one hook up and one hook down until I had 10 lengths. I would throw this out into the lake and let it settle to the bottom, then slowly retrieve it back, snagging anything it came in contact with: hooks, line weights, sun glasses, and a few rods and reels.
A neat old guy named Mr. Service used to come out at sunup with his cart, "HOOOOT COOFFEE," and rolls; then at lunchtime he sold sandwiches and pop. I went to school with his son Jim and always felt sorry for him that his dad had to sell hot coffee for a living. Today I would love to have that concession. When Jim went to high school his dad bought him a car.
The water level on the lake always fluctuated, as far as I can remember, then when Harold Washington was mayor, there was high water and flooding going on along Lake Shore Drive. Some of the lobbies in buildings and LSD was flooded.
The mayor convened a committee to figure out how to keep Lake Michigan from flooding the City. So experts said we had to open the locks and drain the water into the Mississippi; the people down south said if you flood us we'll sue. Another said if we drained a billion gallons a day it would take 10 years to get the level down.
Now mind you, no one was asking the real experts, the Lake Front Fisherman. The following week the water level returned to normal, all the "experts" went home, and no one had an answer as to why.
God and Nature handle things pretty well; all we have to do is stay out of the way. It's a system that has been working up to now.
Bill Matteson
June 20, 2011
Montrose Pier and Harbor and George the Hot Dog Man
Editor's Note: Ron of Knotmyline.com, who fished from Montrose Pier as a child, has given us kind permission to reprint this post. Ron, now in his seventies, lived on Chicago's North Side when he was a kid. Be sure to visit his blog for more stories.
Montrose Pier and Harbor
I was just a toddler when first my parents took me out to Montrose Pier. The mile or so long pier extends out into the lake and ends with a horseshoe or fishhook shape. There were several tall towers on the pier with lights and foghorns to warn and alert vessels on the lake.
Some of my early memories are of fishing for perch with my dad and brother on Montrose pier. Pilings about 16 feet apart had been driven into the lake bed, fill of some sort was added and on top of the fill were huge limestone blocks at about 10 feet square. I imagine that at one time these blocks had been placed somewhat evenly on the fill, but over the years due to erosion and weathering they had become a jumble of uneven stones. In many areas there were big gaps between the blocks and to get from one to the other was an adventure. A few years after World War II the park district renovated the pier. They encased it entirely in concrete and put in a center chain handrail.
My brother tells of how in the early and mid 40′s the lakefront was still being developed and he would take a bus to the old Lake View pumping station at Clarendon and Montrose and then walk on pipes and fill and junk to get to the pier. This expansion and improvement of Chicago’s parks began with the 1930s projects of the New Deal. The area along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago from Jackson Park to Montrose Harbor is actually a 15-mile chain of land entirely created by dredging, landfill and plantings, accomplished with the labor of hundreds funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The development of Montrose Harbor started in 1934, the year I was born.
One of my favorite characters associated with Montrose pier was George the hot dog man. Before the renovation George would carry his wares out to the anglers, but once the concrete was in, he had a large steam cart that rolled on wheels easily along the pier. He would push his cart along and every once in a while shout at the top of his lungs, “Hot coffeeeeee”, “Hot Doggggs” and folks would gather around. “Keep the change?” he would ask his patrons in his broken Greek accent adding, “Always, in the old country, I would tell the old man – keep the change, old man!” On warm sunny days he would sneak up on on an angler sound asleep on the pier. Standing nearly on top of the person he would shout “QUIET, QUIET PLEASE, MAN SLEEPING!” Usually the sleeper would almost leap into the lake startled with that shout. If someone needed their trolley anchor thrown out into the lake, George was the man for the job. He would wind up and pitch that anchor further than all but a few.
The renovation of the pier made life a lot easier for anglers and sightseers. Prior to it the pier was a dangerous place. Broken bottles, old fishhooks and other assorted trash collected between the limestone blocks. Lazy anglers used the dark recesses between blocks as a toilet, filth accumulated around the towers and the stench could be nauseating. The concrete brought an end to most of that, a welcome sight to most of us. Because of Lake Michigan’s dangerous waters, the pier is still a place where one needs to be alert at all times. Occasionally a seiche will occur on the lake and those waves can easily wash across the pier and leave it barren. But regardless of all the effort and possible danger, a day at the pier can easily be one of the best you can enjoy.
Montrose Pier and Harbor
I was just a toddler when first my parents took me out to Montrose Pier. The mile or so long pier extends out into the lake and ends with a horseshoe or fishhook shape. There were several tall towers on the pier with lights and foghorns to warn and alert vessels on the lake.
Some of my early memories are of fishing for perch with my dad and brother on Montrose pier. Pilings about 16 feet apart had been driven into the lake bed, fill of some sort was added and on top of the fill were huge limestone blocks at about 10 feet square. I imagine that at one time these blocks had been placed somewhat evenly on the fill, but over the years due to erosion and weathering they had become a jumble of uneven stones. In many areas there were big gaps between the blocks and to get from one to the other was an adventure. A few years after World War II the park district renovated the pier. They encased it entirely in concrete and put in a center chain handrail.
My brother tells of how in the early and mid 40′s the lakefront was still being developed and he would take a bus to the old Lake View pumping station at Clarendon and Montrose and then walk on pipes and fill and junk to get to the pier. This expansion and improvement of Chicago’s parks began with the 1930s projects of the New Deal. The area along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago from Jackson Park to Montrose Harbor is actually a 15-mile chain of land entirely created by dredging, landfill and plantings, accomplished with the labor of hundreds funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The development of Montrose Harbor started in 1934, the year I was born.
One of my favorite characters associated with Montrose pier was George the hot dog man. Before the renovation George would carry his wares out to the anglers, but once the concrete was in, he had a large steam cart that rolled on wheels easily along the pier. He would push his cart along and every once in a while shout at the top of his lungs, “Hot coffeeeeee”, “Hot Doggggs” and folks would gather around. “Keep the change?” he would ask his patrons in his broken Greek accent adding, “Always, in the old country, I would tell the old man – keep the change, old man!” On warm sunny days he would sneak up on on an angler sound asleep on the pier. Standing nearly on top of the person he would shout “QUIET, QUIET PLEASE, MAN SLEEPING!” Usually the sleeper would almost leap into the lake startled with that shout. If someone needed their trolley anchor thrown out into the lake, George was the man for the job. He would wind up and pitch that anchor further than all but a few.
The renovation of the pier made life a lot easier for anglers and sightseers. Prior to it the pier was a dangerous place. Broken bottles, old fishhooks and other assorted trash collected between the limestone blocks. Lazy anglers used the dark recesses between blocks as a toilet, filth accumulated around the towers and the stench could be nauseating. The concrete brought an end to most of that, a welcome sight to most of us. Because of Lake Michigan’s dangerous waters, the pier is still a place where one needs to be alert at all times. Occasionally a seiche will occur on the lake and those waves can easily wash across the pier and leave it barren. But regardless of all the effort and possible danger, a day at the pier can easily be one of the best you can enjoy.
Trolley Fishing at Montrose Pier, Chicago
Editor's Note: We've had a number of readers curious to learn more about trolley fishing in Lake Michigan. Ron of Knotmyline.com, who fished from Montrose Pier as a kid, has given us kind permission to reprint this post, which includes an illustration of the setup.
Trolley Fishing at Montrose Pier
Some of my early memories are of fishing with my dad and brother on Montrose Pier. In those days it was a common practice to fish from the pier with a “trolley”. That practice is far less common these days. The last time I was there was in the 70s, and even then I saw only a few trolley anglers. A trolley was quite a complicated setup. You needed a spider anchor, about 100 yards of anchor line, a 2-3 ounce trolley, a 6 foot long sturdy wood pole, a 6-8 foot long piece of fish line with a snelled hook every foot or so attached to 100 yards of fish line, and a “bell’.
The spider anchor is thrown out into the water as far as a person can fling it. The arms of the anchor catch on debris on the bottom and the angler tightens the attached anchor line and ties it to the top of the pole. The pole is fitted into slots in the concrete at the edge of the pier. The weighted trolley is attached to the anchor line. It has two wheels that sit atop the cord and its weighted body hangs under the line. The wheels roll along the anchor line as the angler raises or lowers the trolley.
The trolley is a good device that allows the angler to fish at varying depths in the water column depending on the spacing of the hooks and how far the trolley is permitted to ride down the anchor line.
The bell is screwed into the pole or some times into a weighted block of wood adjacent to the pole. The fishing line is attached to the bell and when a fish bites, the bell will vibrate and sound a “fish on” alert to the angler. When a school of fish – mostly Perch in those days – pass by they will be attracted to the baited hooks and it is not unusual to catch two or more fish on a single drop to the bottom.
Trolley Fishing at Montrose Pier
Some of my early memories are of fishing with my dad and brother on Montrose Pier. In those days it was a common practice to fish from the pier with a “trolley”. That practice is far less common these days. The last time I was there was in the 70s, and even then I saw only a few trolley anglers. A trolley was quite a complicated setup. You needed a spider anchor, about 100 yards of anchor line, a 2-3 ounce trolley, a 6 foot long sturdy wood pole, a 6-8 foot long piece of fish line with a snelled hook every foot or so attached to 100 yards of fish line, and a “bell’.
The spider anchor is thrown out into the water as far as a person can fling it. The arms of the anchor catch on debris on the bottom and the angler tightens the attached anchor line and ties it to the top of the pole. The pole is fitted into slots in the concrete at the edge of the pier. The weighted trolley is attached to the anchor line. It has two wheels that sit atop the cord and its weighted body hangs under the line. The wheels roll along the anchor line as the angler raises or lowers the trolley.
The trolley is a good device that allows the angler to fish at varying depths in the water column depending on the spacing of the hooks and how far the trolley is permitted to ride down the anchor line.
The bell is screwed into the pole or some times into a weighted block of wood adjacent to the pole. The fishing line is attached to the bell and when a fish bites, the bell will vibrate and sound a “fish on” alert to the angler. When a school of fish – mostly Perch in those days – pass by they will be attracted to the baited hooks and it is not unusual to catch two or more fish on a single drop to the bottom.
More on Chicago's Tidal Wave of 1954
Contemporary accounts and eyewitness reports of the seiche that struck Chicago in 1954 can be found here: Tidal Wave
November 12, 2010
Montrose Harbor, 1991
A beautiful day at Montrose Harbor, with Chicago skyline in background. Purchase the original press photo here: For the Birds
November 4, 2010
Giant Carp Caught at Montrose Harbor, 1957 and 1959
I don't think I've seen anything this big pulled out of Montrose Harbor before.
For those of you who fish the lake, what's the biggest fish you've ever caught?
Top image available here: Grandad and Kids
Bottom image here: Bait Shop
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| Original caption: Sam Smith get help from grandkids Roger and Adrienne Kahan,who had caught huge carp fish from Montrose Harbor. Oct 8 1957 |
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| Original caption: John Sares and Leo Kobus hold up 100lbs of carp caught by Bill Green and John Tracus, owner of Park Bait Shop at foot of Montrose Ave |
For those of you who fish the lake, what's the biggest fish you've ever caught?
Top image available here: Grandad and Kids
September 4, 2010
Father Son Fishing at Montrose Harbor, 1954
Seller's description: "Like father Like Son" 1954 Tiny Ricky Werderitch keeps getting all the bites on his bamboo pole line, while daddy has had nothing but quiet! Montrose Ave Harbor, July 11, 1954.
Purchase original image here: Father-Son Fishing Trip
$10 Each Week for the Biggest Perch, 1962, Montrose Harbor, Chicago
Seller's description: While the rest of the city is sleeping, there are workers who stay up all night or get up hours earlier, such as Joseph Marder of the Park Bait Store in Montrose Harbor. June 28, 1962.
August 19, 2010
Montrose Harbor, 1959, Uptown Chicago
Montrose Harbor, circa 1959. (Original image available here: Montrose Harbor Chicago
August 16, 2010
Crowds Fishing at Montrose Harbor in Uptown Chicago on June 26, 1960
Crowds fishing from the breakwater at Montrose Harbor in Chicago on June 26, 1960. Original image can be purchased at Montrose Harbor
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