Kenai, Alaska: Fishing For Bears -- Another Alaskan Tall Tale?

The people in Alaska enjoy Fishing For Bears. Or rather they fish and the bears feel comfortable with 'taking' the catch. The bears are not really interested in people, just the fish people catch.

Let me start at the beginning and then I'll tell you about -- Fishing For Bears...

My buddy Dave & I went salmon fishing yesterday on the Kenai River. Actually we were fishing at the confluence of the Kenai River and the Russian River, one of the hottest salmon fishing spots in Alaska. This area is known for its Combat Fishing.



If you are not familiar with the term, Combat Fishing refers to a uniquely Alaskan style of fishing where fishermen stand shoulder-to-shoulder and flip their lines in front of the salmon swimming upstream. Seriously, folks line the river banks on both side of the river for a mile or more, standing roughly 10-12 feet apart.

And you don't cast the lure/bait and then reel the line in. Nope, that would be fishing, not combat fishing. Here you flip the line and bait out 8-12 feet about 45 degrees up river, let the line float downstream and then pull like crazy to set the hook. The salmon are not hungry and do not 'eat' the bait, Actually they get annoyed with anything that gets in their way of accomplishing the monumental task of spawning, the first step of which is to swim long distances past all sorts of wildlife predators, then commercial fishermen using nets, then sports fishermen using fishing poles in order to return to the exact location where the fish hatched a couple of years ago.

So if you cast your line and let it drift down river properly, the angry salmon snaps at the line and, if you are setting the hook at the same time, you snag them in the mouth.

Snag them anywhere else (back, belly, tail, etc) and you have to let them go. That's if you can get them in. An improperly snagged fish usually breaks the line. Unless you hook a fish in the mouth its almost impossible to beat the combination of their strength and the flow of the river. Do it right and you have a real fight on your hands with these big fish.

When hooked properly, the salmon put on quite a display, leaping and splashing as you pull them to shore. The fish that are running on the Kenai/Russian river right now are the Red Salmon which range in size from small (5 pounds) up to large (20 pounds). These fish are huge and truly an amazing sight (King Salmon are even bigger; I saw a 59.8 pound King Salmon when we were in Petersburg).

The best part of the 6 hours Dave & I spent fishing was when a large brown bear wandered out of the woods, calmly selected a nice salmon someone had caught moments earlier, and then wandered back into the trees to enjoy said salmon. About 30 minutes later, here comes the same bear, walks along the shore, selects another fresh salmon and takes it into the woods. It reminded me of the way you or I would walk along the seafood counter at the grocery store and take a few minutes selecting the freshest and best looking fish to take home for our meal. Except his fish choices were a lot fresher than ours...

Apparently, walking out of the woods and back into the woods involved far too much effort because about 30 minutes after taking the second salmon the brown bear emerges from the woods after eating his second huge salmon and strolls down the river's bank until he finds a stringer of about five salmon. Despite a number of people shouting at the bear and someone banging pots and pans together, the bear sat down and began enjoying all five of the salmon. And there he sat for over an hour before he strolled back into the woods for a well deserved late morning nap.

When you look at the pictures I took of the bear you can almost feel the fisherman's frustration of losing the fish he had worked so hard to catch.

This bear reminded me of the politicians who run our country. He only took a part of what the people had earned by working. Just like politicians know if they take all of our money we would quit working for them, the bear was careful to take just enough so people would keep working on his behalf. By just skimming off the top keeps lots of people coming out and fishing hard & in the process make sure the bear is well fed.

All those pictures you see of a bear standing in the freezing water waiting for a fish to leap into his mouth or chasing a fish through ankle deep water must happen in areas where fishing is restricted or prohibited. Bears are too opportunistic to work that hard when they can steal the fish -- from a person or another animal.

Seriously, the state of Alaska is working hard to reduce the number of bear/people interactions however its difficult to make that happen when the bear and the people are drawn to the same item like moths to a flame. The state has reduced the number of fish cleaning stations so any waste (basically anything other than the salmon fillets) can be thrown into the fast moving river.

And the Kenai River is fast. Wander too far into the current and you will be swept away. The current flows so hard that it can be harnessed to move the people ferry across the river; no engines required, thank you.

It seemed everyone was out fishing as the banks were literally filled with people standing 10 feet apart. And there is apparently more skill required than first meets the eye. I walked about a mile along the river and paid close attention to the stringers where people keep the fish they catch. You would go past five people in a row who had no fish on their stringer and then the sixth person would have 4 or 5 big salmon on his stringer. And then I realized that each of the fish on that guy's stringer had swum past the other fishermen, none of whom had the skill/equipment/luck to catch any of those fish. And yet the sixth guy had whatever it takes to catch fish and was well on his way to fulfilling his daily limit of six fish. Really amazing.

Oh, so how did Dave and I do? Lets just say the bears were disappointed with the results -- however I plan to keep Fishing For Bears.

See Ya!