Fish & Bears on the Karluk

We had lots of fun fishing in Alaska on the Island of Kodiak on the Karluk River. The silver salmon were large this year, mostly around 15 pounds each. The first of the week the weather was good and the water calm. This is Dave Bowers showing his little fish in his right hand and my big fish in his left.

This was our morning catch. We had some good fighters and we had our limit by 11am.

This is the mornings catch, we had 10 salmon and on the end 2 steelheads we had for lunch.The bears were everywhere. One morning Dave and I counted 6 bears we could see around us. These two bears walked on the shore 50ft from where Bowers and I were anchored. For the Karluk fisherman this is at the point by the tank. We thought we were fine since we were out in a boat and they were on the shore.

Then right in front of us the swam into the deep water and caught a salmon right in front of our boat. They then just swam out into the more shallow area and kept fishing. Enough salmon for everyone. Often we would come in from fishing and have to move the bears out of the way to get our boats in. These bears were there every day.

We liveed in that brown cabin just above the river.Last year one tried to get in that door you see. That was Bowers and my bedroom. There is just some plastic over the hole in the door where the bear tried to get in. Those two bears live in the bushes off to the right. We would see them walking by the cabin.This is Layne & Malyn taking pictures of the bears while we waited for them to move off. We had a great time. The weather became bad later in the week and we had 50 mph winds that shook the trailer and kept us off the water 2 days. In my next post I'll show you pictures of me getting caught with a lure.