Buskin River Salmon Fishing with the Bears

Salmon Fishing at Buskin River with the Bears

It was a rainy day, but Tom and I didn't let that stop us! We packed the back of the Nissan X-Terra and hoped the weather would clear up so we could go camping. Tom had reserved the Scamp again through the Coast Guard, but I had told him I didn't want to go camping unless the weather cleared up. So, in the meantime, we headed out to the Buskin River to go salmon fishing...this time, in the rain.

When Kodiak gets rain it can be miserable. The winds blow, the clouds settle in close to the coast, and the misty/rainy weather can cool you off quickly. Despite the weather we were determined to catch some fish.

Tom and I had gone fishing for salmon at the Buskin River for the first time two weeks ago. The sun was out and it was an amazing day. We caught two salmon (one was a "humpy"), and Tom even caught a tiny flounder fish (usually you see these guys at about 130 pounds or so...big difference to this little guy!).

This time, when we got to the location where we had fished previously...We saw that there was no one there. When we had been there two weeks ago the sun was out and there were so many people fishing that Tom and I had to go waaaay up stream to catch anything. As someone put it, it was "fishing war-fare".

Now, two weeks later, no one was there and we had the pick of fishing holes. I asked Tom, "Do they know something we don't?"

It wasn't until I had chosen a fishing hole and shimmied down the bank that I saw them...

Big Ol' Bear prints in the mud!!! When we looked around, we could see that the grass had been trampled by something large.

Tom and I, with bear pepper spray at hand, decided to catch some fish anyway.

And, catch them we did...

Tom caught four and I caught three. Our limit was five a piece. We decided to stop after five hours of fishing. We were both exhausted, Tom even more so because he had to gut and fillet all of those fish!

He did an amazing job, though, (even with the sea gulls dive-bombing the scraps when Tom threw them in the water) and we went home happy!

Great fishing in Kodiak!!! No bears...thank goodness (although, Tom really wants to see one...hopefully from a distance). This time, no camping. We ended up going home, renting a movie and splitting a pizza. My kind of night!