We wore ourselves out fishing for hours on the Kenai River (at the fishermen’s ferry). Thousands of casts resulted in no fish. Most people weren’t having much luck, though a few savvy people had nice stringers.

Three great things about the Kenai – the color of the water, friendly summer resident David who gave us loads of helpful tips, and a playful grizzly on the other side of the river while we were fishing.

I thought the bear was chasing and pouncing on fish, but with C’s zoom we could see it was a water bottle. It was so neat to watch him splash around in the water. He never showed any interest in approaching people, so everyone kept fishing.

We had some of yesterday’s fish for dinner, delicious! I thought I was going to be done fishing for the day, but it was so good that I was motivated to keep trying. So glad we went out again!

I was so happy when C got a fish a bit before 9 p.m. Yummy! Plus now we could quit and rest our weary bones. I knew C hates to quit right after getting a fish and he eagerly took me up on 15 more minutes. That worked out brilliantly as a mother grizzly with 3 cubs showed up about 200 yards upstream. I stopped fishing and just watched them while the others watched them briefly, took a few photos, and then kept fishing. C got more than 15 minutes.

The mother checked us out carefully, but never approached any closer. She pulled salmon carcasses out of the water and shared them with the cubs. The gulls seemed to benefit as well. The cubs were boisterous while Mom was all business. One of the cubs was significantly smaller, and we learned from our cousins that a runt is normal when there are more than 2 cubs. More about visiting our cousins in the next post!