More Bears than Cohos
  August 29-31, 2011


Young bears playing

Friday
Depart north Douglas 9:12 am; seas calling for two feet or less all week, including this morning; encounter rollers around Pt. Retreat which build into solid 3-4 footers; long haul to hole up in Funter Bay for an hour; bubble net lunge feeding humpbacks just north of Funter.  Drift around Funter; engine gets tangled in bull kelp; chilled; drink tea.  Head out again, seas had laid down a little, crossed to Pt. Augusta. Seas tolerable, but not fun heading south; Dall's porpoises briefly close to shore.  Seiners clumped up around the points; we are squeezed between the skiff and some rocks above False Bay, then had to go around the outside of all the boats below Iyoukeen Cove; seas built up outside these points, not fun to get pushed out into it.  Whales blowing in Iyoukeen, then a breach.  Two breaches simultaneously, then many more breaches, caudal-peduncle throws, tail lobs, doubles of all activities at once from a group of at least six or seven whales; stern is to the seas, so watching is much more comfortable; back into the seas going around the corner.

Caught one coho in the creek on arrival; several bears, lots of romping after salmon.  Drifted out of the creek; saw a school of fish in a hollow just outside the entrance close to shore, apparently pinks; cast into it and pulled several away, one of which bit and turned out to be a coho.  Several large yachts in the bay; anchored the Ronquil in the area north of the creek around the corner inside the big intertidal boulder; pitched tent on the beach grass above the wrack line.  Chris inflated new tiny inflatable and rowed our food to the boat after dinner.  Kept waking up to sloshing sounds getting closer, then the floor of the tent felt like a waterbed; opened zipper to find us floating on several inches of water.  Boots were dry, leapt out and pulled the tent to the edge of the forest; nothing got wet.

Calm seas near Juneau	Breach (and breath)	Caudal-peduncle throw
Caudal-peduncle throw	Bear fishing	Two bears come to fish the creek at low tide
Yellow-back bear	Camp	Chris rows to the Ronquil

Saturday
Sunny morning.  Carried the inflatable to the top of the dam through the forest; five bears feeding below the dam including several large bears (probably siblings) that were playing.  Climbed aboard and rowed to the river in 30 minutes (less than hiking and much more comfortable).  Caught lots and lots of dollies; I soon had a coho on the line, but it slipped the hook just as we were landing him.  My second coho buried itself in the shallow reeds and got the line tangled in the vegetation so he was able to lose the lure while I disentangled the line.  Chris caught a pink that had followed his line in by dangling his lure in front of it, then landed a coho; lots of dollies, hard to keep them off the line, learned to reel in very fast at the end to avoid them.  Broke for lunch; I wandered upstream to where the creek diverges into two large channels; saw spawning sockeye.  More fishing; mostly cutthroats biting now, also dollies; no cohos, but can't keep trout away.  Kept one large dolly for dinner.  Paddled back across the lake, one paddle for each of us (better than rowing).

One brown bear at the bottom of the dam eating a fish, then grass, stops us; bear disappears under the ledge below us, not sure where he is; wait for some time, finally peer over the edge and don't see him.  Walk down the dam and to the beach; fish the falling tide, moving farther into the creek and closer to the deep holes as the tide falls.  I get one on, lost as it zipped into the shallows below the dam; Chris got two on, lost one to a knot in his line; lands one.  Two bears, then mama and single young cub.  Yellow-backed bear comes toward us from downstream, yell him away from us.  Eventually pack up and walk home.  Chris rows to the Ronquil to ice the fish while I start dinner: dolly, stuffing, and wine.  Exhausted.  Yellow-backed bear shows up walking along the edge of the water heading toward the creek; sniffs avidly up at the cooking dolly (or so it seemed); full of wine, Chris and I yell and bluster at him until he, resignedly, left his course and went straight up into the woods, reappearing about ten minutes later on the other side of us continuing toward the creek.  Cohos jump tauntingly at us nearby; Chris walks down the beach as the light falls and casts repeatedly into an area where a coho has been jumping and gets a strike; I run over with a flashlight and knife.  We realize how hard it is to fish in the dark, not able to tell where the line is or what the fish is doing.  After a long battle, the fish is lost. 

Three young bears playing	Rowing across the lake	At the lake with a fish on
The dolly we kept	Pavlof River	The bear blocking out path at the dam
Fuzzy bear ears below the dam	Chris with fish on	How we felt at the end of the day
Dinner	A bear approaches camp	After three days, I grow a fisherman's beard

Sunday
Tide is very low; Chris explores the creek where schools of pinks are packing the remaining pools, I cast from the boat outside the mouth for a while and try to halibut fish.  Chris catches a fish, lands it, looks up to see a brown bear across the narrow creek watching him, stabs it in the gills and takes off down the beach to rendezvous with me, fish still attached to the hook and bleeding down the front of his waders.  Fish is a pink, silver bright; we clean and ice it, then continue fishing in the creek as the tide rises.  So many pinks.  Finally return to camp, pack up, halibut fish for five minutes, and then head home; seas rough and scary heading out of Freshwater bay and around the point, so much so that I am scared and consider turning around if it doesn't improve.  Chris spots a rock I could have run into off the point.  Thankfully, as usual, the waves are worst around the points and laid down considerably outside Iyoukeen Cove, much more comfortable ride home.

Chris and two bears fishing