Nitinat Lake Chinook Broodstock Take

Kermode and Other Bears

I really enjoyed the images of all the bears in the TC  newspaper recently, particularly the photographer on his knees filming a Kermode just a few feet from it. As I spend as much as 50 days a year in the wilds of Van Isle, I have had hundreds of bear experiences over the years.

On one occasion a big black bear and I looked up to observe the other wandering along when we were several hundred yards apart. We both went back to looking at the gravel in front of our feet and shambling along – bears really do shamble – and came to a gravel ridge the winter river had left. As my head came above the gravel, the bear’s head did too, so close we could have touched one another. We both had heart attacks, let out screams and raced backward into the forest on our side of the river.

Last fall, I was standing calf deep in a river fly fishing, when I looked behind me and had a heart attack. There was a bear only 10 feet from me. The only reason it hadn’t come right up to me and filched my apple and banana out of my vest’s back pouch with its claws was that it was dipping one toe in the water, checking whether the water was too cold to bother. I rapidly searched my pockets and found only a scuzzy, old protein bar covered in chocolate, and tossed it at the bear.

The bear slowly figured out how to separate the chocolate protein from its bag, and, chops drooling, reluctantly began to eat it. Its nostrils and lips were shrinking back with every chew, and though it did eat the offering, it looked at me with the look of, ‘I really would have preferred your banana and apple’ as I slowly inched backward into much deeper water. It remembered toeing the water and, licking chocolate from its teeth, put its hands on its hips, unfulfilled then disappeared back into the woods.

For several falls there was a female bear who never had cubs with her. She was identifiable by her limp, having broken a back leg some years previously, and by how thin she was. On this morning, I had put my packsack on the gravel bar and wandered around in the water, casting to a large school of 30-pound springs, and 15-pound coho. When I turned to see her limp her way to my lunch, I busied myself casting, and was able to hook a big coho, before she got into my pack. Once the fish was in hand wet and slippery, I hit it between the eyes with my fist, and launched it back over my head in a long arc, falling past my packsack. Sensing something good, as in real food, not people food, she limped over to it and discovered it was the best lunch she’d had in years. She didn’t thank me, but disappeared into the willows, and I could hear ripping flesh shortly thereafter, until every molecule was in her tummy.

I had another bear lunch experience, while almost chest deep casting a chartreuse Nitnook fly to fall chinook milling about on the far side of the river, a place where all fish are, as we anglers know only too well. Someone started to laugh, and I turned to see a boar with his head completely inside my packsack, which was sitting on the shore. I yelled, ‘Hey,’ and started trying to run out of the water, much to everyone’s amusement as I was so deep I couldn’t muster much speed. The bear had by now taken out my single-use plastic bag full of my own special chocolate chip cookies and other good stuff, including a can of Coke I was looking forward to guzzling. Realizing he had all the time in the world, he put the bag on the ground, and, to get a better grip on it, picked the bag up neatly by its handles with his long front teeth – he actually did this – and ambled into the woods, me in hot pursuit.

I ran into the woods and almost fell face first over the bear because it had decided to sit down on its bumb and savour my Coke first. What I mean is that the bear knew what Coke was and how to separate its nice sweetness from its can, presumably having done this many times before. It sat there paws out in front, with its head tipped back, mouth the highest part of him, and crunched the can and drank my Coke. At that point, looking at all the teeth holes in my tin of pop, I started scrambling backwards, crab-like on my hands and feet. I didn’t want to end up like the can.

When he finished the Coke, the bear put the can down neatly, picked up the rest of my bag of lunch, by the handles, and ambled deeper into the woods to eat his ‘catch’ in peace. I picked up the can, full of holes, and as I broke from the forest with only an empty can in my hand, every other fly fisher at the school had a good laugh.

On another occasion, I was walking an old logging road, and spotted an alder that had been thrashed from fifteen feet to about two feet, then covered with bright red scent by a large cougar. The cougar had, before marking the stalk, taken hold of it and ripped it pretty much clear of the ground, an immense amount of strength. I past 25 alders similarly thrashed, pulled from the ground and marked with bright red urine. Eerie it was, as I was all alone.

I left the track, went down through the jungle that is west coast bush and started walking along a dry gulch of gravel in second growth forest. I noticed a 500-pound boar down the wash before he saw me. I cleared my throat so it would hear me. The huge bear looked me in the eye and began running directly for me. I didn’t give a half second’s thought but started running full speed toward it. As we rocketed together, it veered off slightly into the forest, leaving me catching my breath and thinking how lucky I had been, still here to tell the tale. Later that day, stumbling a summer low Eve River a couple of clicks higher, I came upon a rock of 6 to 8 feet across that looked exactly like a cougar’s head.

I have had many other bear experiences but have found that they aren’t that interested in people, and so we just acknowledge one another and go on with our days. A few weeks ago, another bear, within 10 feet of me in the jungle, while I was in the water, didn’t realize I was there. I cleared my throat, the bear had a heart attack, and thrashed the rainforest jungle to escape. Bears on this Island are timid, I think because the bold ones get shot, and it’s safer to run away. Even so, having watched a small bear thrash, any bear could kill you easily.

Here is a crop of the Coke can that now graces my mantel above the fireplace, with other fishing memorabilia, like a chartreuse Clouser smashed to smithereens having caught 15 black bass in 15 casts at Langara Island in Haida Gwaii. You can find an image of the cougar head rock here: https://poetrydcreid.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-does-warm-animal-come-to-her-death.html. It is the bottom image below the poem. The image there of the elk carcass looked like it had been killed by a cougar, but the lack of bones, and how the jaw cracked big ones in half, suggested that a bear scared the cougar off. In my experience, bears don’t kill deer, but are brutish enough to steal a carcass from a cougar.

Here, is a post of images. The one of the Little Nitinat canyon is as beautiful as it looks, on this day like a fairy tale, in deep fall: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-man-and-his-river-2.html.

And another post of images. The Fomitopsis pinicola is a beauty of a fungi: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-man-and-his-river.html. I have video, too.

Here is a story from A Man And His River, a book that has just found a home with Hancock House: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.com/2018/10/chapter-3-man-and-his-river.html.

A Man And His River - 2

5,000 chinook at Glory Slough:

Note the scum and bubbles on the surface. From their circular pattern, moving up, across, down and back across, etc., chinook schools carry surface detritus, bubbles from releasing them after sipping air at the surface along with them. You will see these patches that are moving upstream, rather than down, because of all the fish underneath creating the current. A good way to spot big schools. This is just a detail of the entire school.

A bright 12-pound coho in September:

A nice, big chum:

Cutthroat Trout taken with a dry fly:

Me and my kickboat:

A big chinook and happy angler:

Winter Steelhead Gear:

Winter Steelhead Flies:

Winter steelhead taken on a pink worm:

Who says you can't land a flounder on a fly?

Bunny Leeches

Fly fishing for coho in deep fall in the Little Nitinat canyon:

A nice winter steelhead on the fly:

Laying out a Spey cast:

A nice chinook salmon:

Stoneflies. These can be deadly:

A Man And HIs River

An 18pound summer steelhead. The butt to top of cork distance is one foot, showing the viewer that this is a large fish. 

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Bear Tracks

                                                   My car covered with mud, as it usually is.

                                       My car out in the middle of nowhere, covered with mud.

                    Cougar tracks are roundish unlike wolf tracks that are more pointed at the front and                                                                  look like dog tracks.

                             
                                A cutthroat trout surfing to me with a bunny leech in its mouth.

                                      
                                          A tack sharp summer cutthroat taken at Glass Run.

                                     A 10 pound coho with a Blue Fox Spinner with a pink body.

                                      A summer cutthroat taken in August in the lower river.

                                                         Huckleberry flowers in April.

    A huge Maple Tree on Diagonal Run. It looks like it has been toppling into the river for a century.

                          A beauty of a plate-shaped, black fungi, possibly a Fomitopsis pinicola.

                                 An example of the second phenotype of summer steelhead                                                in the Nitinat that has shown up in the past few years.

                                                  Long-billed shore birds in the estuary.

                                             A blood hand from gutting a November coho.

Summer steelhead flies, on the right.

Alder trees that line the 1906 railway grade at Big Bend

A 13 pound coho taken at Parker Pool.

       Fly fishing for cutthroat trout at the bottom end of Cutt Corner. Both of these logs, up to 8 feet  in                 diameter, were blown through on the next high water, and are no longer there.

          A one-year  male, Jimmy. Though it looks like a small, fat pink salmon, it has the                                       black teeth of chinook and the unmistakable smell of one.

                                    The third phenotype of summer steelhead. Very pretty fish.

                 A beautiful shot of a caster fishing an estuary on north Van Isle in the dawn.

                             A box of summer/winter steelhead flies on the left side, bunny leeches.