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Day 4

It was nice to sleep in a little while and even nicer to have bacon, sausage and toast from the self-appointed camp cook. We headed out to do a little fishing late morning and check out some sights.

We stopped at one spot on the coast and quickly found a pile of guy lined up casting for silvers. Looked like everyone was doing a lot more fishing then catching. I watched one guy leave his truck with a fillet board, walk down into the crowd, cast between two other guys and quickly pulled out two nice silvers. Probably pissed off the guys next to him pretty good 😊

Note to self: Find out what kind of fillet board he was using.

I snagged a fish which popped off right at shore then we quickly lost interest and decided to go somewhere else. Fishing with 52 of our closest friends really isn’t our style. It was fun to watch the sea otter, sea lions and other wildlife.



As we were leaving we spotted a couple black bears right on the side of the road. It gave us a chance to look some bears over at close range to get our eyes dialed in so to speak for judging.



The one thing my buddy had told me before I left was that he wouldn’t judge me if we shot small bears because that time of year they will all be fat and look huge. Looking at this little guy on the side of the road I had to agree. At certain angles and in the heat of the moment I could easily see making a poor choice on a small bear.

We decided to check out the spot our new outfitter buddy had drawn the map for and headed that way. We put on our waders and after a short walk to the river we realized that we weren’t the only ones fishing this spot.





I secretly wanted to see a big brown close up but it is always a little unsettling when you see a track that size and brush so thick you know you would have zero reaction time. These bears aren’t hungry so it was unlikely we would have an issue but still adds a new dimension to the fishing trip.

It didn’t take long and my son hooked up and landed his first silver



…and then another.



Papa was trying to figure out how to get his fly presented properly but after a few minutes on the struggle bus he nailed a dandy.






A couple of other guys showed up and he offered them the fish which they gladly accepted.

It was getting closer to lunch time and I was anxious to get setup for our evening glassing session so we ended the fishing on a high note and headed to the cabin.



Our evening glassing session involved a mile long hike and then a multi-hour sit.



We waited to till dark and saw one big brown bear over a mile away that was in the open for probably two hours and zero black bears. When we made it back to the rig we ran into the guys my dad had given the fish to. They hunted a different side of the highway and had seen a black bear within a mile of the little bear we passed on the night before. I was beginning to think the bears had not got the word about segregation being over as some places only held blacks and some only held browns.

We decided our next hunt would be on the black side of town...