The Atnarko river has a summer chum run that happens in late July/early August, but there are also a few fish that arrive later in the year, in early fall, around the same time as the Chinook. A few years ago the facility started a pilot program to see if they could collect some to provide a bit of rebuilding support but it’s been a tough slog for them to get many brood. Chum tend to arrive in the river pretty much ready to spawn, they don’t tend to hold long and that makes it more challenging to catch them while still carrying eggs.
It was a cloudy/smoky start to the day; there is a fire that has been burning in the Talchako valley since early August and I got to see it from an interesting vantage point when I flew in on Monday. Depending on the winds the smoke can go from fairly heavy to almost imperceptible in a matter of hours. By midday the clouds had vacated, the smoke largely cleared, and the day turned beautiful.
Last year I spent one day on a chum hunt and although I seem to remember that we caught a male, what I remember more about that day was almost filling my waders and being saved from doing so by a giant of a 16 year-old kid on the crew. 🤣 There was no repeat performance on my part today.
My second day on the river was on the lower part of the Atnarko, from Belarko down to Fisheries Pool, to hunt for fall chum while also taking any ripe Chinook we encountered in the net in the process.
While we caught more Chinook than chum, and also found a few rainbow trout, a Dolly Varden, a sockeye or two, some pinks, and a Rocky Mountain Whitefish, which is a very cool looking fish, we did catch some chum and spawned a female and two males on the river. So the day was a win.
There were clearly bears in the same area of the river that we were fishing, as there were very fresh tracks in the mud along the way downstream. Some little bears and at least one or two bigger, but not massive, ones.
Eventually we encountered more than just tracks, four bears total, and two of those were uncomfortable encounters.
The first two were a sow and cub. We pulled up on the raft and held back as we could see them behind a few logs, fishing. A bit of noise finally got them moving, or at least the cub. Eventually momma bear saw us and headed out of the water and off into the bush.
The first came wandering down the river as we were about to set and didn’t give a fig that we were there, he just kept coming and so we made way for him while at the same time making it clear that we wanted him to leave….he didn’t. Someone threw a rock and the splash in the river had the opposite effect than was desired…..presumably he thought it was a fish and suddenly become even more interested, way too interested.
Most years, when on the other side of the river or in the raft, the water is often deep enough to provide a little bit of a buffer, but the river is so low and shallow this year that it’s no barrier should a bear feel like making a statement and charging. And that’s not a comfortable feeling when a bear is more interested than not.
After the bear passed us it continued down the river and picked off a couple of pink salmon, stripping their skin off in one easy pull. We kept an eye on it for a bit, but it carried on and we could see him splashing after fish farther upstream. We were no longer of interest.
A little farther downstream we finally caught some chum, one ripe female and two males. We pulled them out of the net and spawned them. A couple of people spawned the fish while a couple of us started to pull the net in and pull twigs out of it so it could be put away into its bucket when someone yelled “BEAR” from shore. The crew on shore bolted for the water. The bear wasn’t visible yet, but noises from the brush behind where the fish had been stripped was a giveaway. The only thing that hadn’t been done was DNA collection and after all that effort, that data was not going to be given up easily. CW ran back to shore, grabbed the three fish and threw them in the raft and pushed back out into the water while three of us pulled the net in and stuffed it into the bucket as fast as we could as the bear finally nosed into view and went directly to the spot where the fish had been bled and stripped.
We rowed around the corner to the pullout at Fisheries Pool where the three chum were pulled out of the boat and DNA samples were collected before throwing the fish across the river onto the far bank.
The bear crossed the water and came down the same way we’d come, though it stayed on the other side. He had a limp so must have had a battle with another bear recently and was looking for easy food. Fisheries Pool is a bear watching site and there are always people sitting around with a ridiculously expensive array of camera equipment….just waiting for a bear. When our bear followed us around the corner there was a small stampede to the edge of the bank with people posting everything from a Canon with a $20,000 lens to an iPhone at the bear on the opposite bank. I used to have lens envy, but then I realized that I get a lot closer to the bears than most of them do. However…as time goes on I find myself thinking that I’d almost rather sit safely up on their bank rather than always feel the hair on the back of my neck rising with every twig that cracks.
After we got back to the hatchery and put the eggs to bed I went for a drive to take advantage of the golden end of day light.
When I’d driven down to the estuary the other day I stopped at a little pullout that used to have a nice bench that one could sit on and enjoy the view. Sadly, the bench appears to have been destroyed 🙁
And when the sun finally disappeared behind the mountain I headed back to the hatchery to make some dinner before sifting through photos and eventually calling it a day.