Fishing and...BEARS!!

Me and dad went to the Russian River to catch some red salmon. The river is notorious for sharing the river and fish with bears, especially when you hike up the river to more remote areas (where there are typically less people and more fish). And as predicted we saw 7 different bears while we fished over the space of two days. Here are the pics...

Here is a young black bear (2-3 years old) coming down to the river on our side of the bank (you can see him peeking over the bushes in the left-center of the picture). He was very timid and would get within 10-15 yards of us and once, someone yelled at him, he would move away. This is the one that came down while we were wading in the water and bit dad's Gatorade bottle that was on the shore. Once the bottle made crunch noise, he dropped it.

This is the one bear we had to be extra cautious. This is an adult mother grizzly bear with two little cubs. The cubs are hard to see in this picture, but they are just ot the left of the mother. They were dark brown, so they blend in. This bear moved down into the very fishing hole we were fishing in. We, of course moved down river long before she got there (we could see her coming).

There were also two young grizzly bears (probably 2-3 years old) that came down the river on the opposite side of the bank. They were more interested in the fish than us.

And yes, we caught some fish. We caught a few red salmon, but this king salmon was the highlight of the trip. We figure it was about 50 pounds. I was able to "floss" it with my fly and reel it in on my 20 pound fishing line. It is red becasue it has been in the fresh water for a long time, has already spawned and now is merely swimming around waiting to die (circle of life).

We couldn't keep him, the king salmon season is over and I am not even sure if you can catch them for keeps in the Russian River, but at any rate, because he is really red, the meat would not have been good anyway.

We had a great time and loved sharing the river with the bears...and living to tell about it!