Big River Lake near Soldotna, Ak

Float plane

Getting ready to fly out.

Silver Salmon

Grizzly on search for his salmon dinner

our

Grizzly swimming about 75 feet from us.

The drive down was nice and the clouds were clearing.  I had packed a picnic lunch and we stopped at a remote state recreation area.  Quite to our surprise we ran into our friends, Connie and Winston Shero there!

Karen and Jim came to visit us.  This day we took a float plane out of Soldotna to Wolverine Creek and Big River Lake.  The plane flew over the Kenai area where we dipnet, and then across the Cook Inlet to an area near Lake Clark.  It was gorgeous scenery seeing glaciers,  Redoubt Volcano (inactive) and Illiamna.  We were fishing for silver salmon and hoping to see bears.  Altogether we caught three salmon and one white fish. I had the worst bite to land ratio.  The rod was quite heavy with a fish on and I was not fast enough at setting the hook, so  many of my bites got away.  The legal limit is three salmon per person per day.  

Midway through our day a grizzly came across a field and swam right by us.  Our guide, Skip, said a different outfitter was fileting salmon nearby and the bear was after the carcass.  Sure enough the bear swam about 75 feet away from our boat. I was amazed to watch it, but not really scared because bears don't attack boats.  He swam over to get his dinner and then swam back and walked across the same field.  Very cool.  The outfitter was not supposed to filet in a lake.  It is okay to filet in a river because the carcass will float down stream with the current.

We flew back and then took the fish to a processor and had dinner at the St. Elias pizza place and then to the River Raven B and B.  Don had stayed at the Raven before and it was a nice place.