Last day out on the river today, and it was on the Lower Atnarko again. No videographers, no chasing chum, no boulders to move, though the crew did bring along a few bags of gravel to fill in a hole in the track down to the put-in at Pacey’s place. Such an incredibly gorgeous spot on the river inside of the boundaries of Tweedsmuir Park. The owners don’t live in the Valley and rumour has ti that neither is doing well and may never return. I hope whoever takes it over or buys it in the future will have an equally good relationship with the hatchery so that the road can still be accessed or it will make putting in for brood collection more challenging.
We stopped at Belarko to drop off one truck and use the facilities. Everyone piled out and, when I went to grab something in the truck, I looked up the road and just ahead, maybe 60 feet away, was a grizzly crossing the road…. peeing all the way. I now know that when I see a wet line across the road it means that a bear has just crossed. I feel like there is a joke in there somewhere.
When we put in we could hear people calling out so we assumed that there was a bear in the area and hoped it wasn’t being chased towards us. The stock assessment crew passed by on the other side of the island, mostly out of sight, and no bear materialized, so it must have gone the other direction. We did a set below Pacey’s, and then another one just below that. When we were moving on to a downstream set three of the crew were walking on shore and two of us were on the raft when we came around a corner and a bear was walking upstream. Everyone, including the bear, was surprised and a lot of yelling and arm waving sent the bear off in the opposite direction. It was probably the same bear that we heard being ushered onward by the StAD crew.
The sets were good today and I don’t think we made a single set that didn’t give us at least one or two ripe does. Some of the sets pull in to a bank, others to a gravel bar, and some just are pulled up onto the shallows.
Other than our early encounter on the road and the surprise bear below Pacey’s, it was a quiet day for bears. There were tracks, but few sightings. We heard one cracking branches in the bush at one spot, but it never came out. About halfway through the day someone spotted one down river. It was a blonde bear and blended in well! We pulled up and watched it for a few moments before encouraging it to move along, which it did.
We hit a point in the day where all of our egg buckets were full so we’d capped out, and switched to collecting green does for holding. We’d had a discussion on best steps the day before and so, rather than collect throughout the day and drag tubed females all the way down the warm river, we decided to only collect from the lower reach, near Belarko where we would pull out.
And was it ever a set!
We filled the net, sunk almost all the corks there were so many in the pool, and set to work picking fish out of the tangle net. It can be frustrating work, particularly when fish manage to twist themselves up in the net and roll over the corklike…and then catch their teeth again in the second layer of net…I really love those ones (not). I was sporting a number of wounds to my thumb from an earlier, smaller, fish that snapped sideways just as I was getting it freed for release, and it raked both sides of my thumb really well. There were a few choice words that came out of my mouth on that hit. Time for a redneck bandaid (aka duct tape). Sometimes freeing these animals is so frustrating!
All week we’d been seeing (and catching) some really big fish, one of today’s really big lunkers used as brood was an opportunity to right a wrong for me. I’ve been coming up here for something like 12 years and I’ve never (willingly) let anyone take my photo. So I fixed that today, and pulled a monster fish out of the pile for a photo op. He was so big and so heavy that it was super challenging to hoist him up for a photo. I tried to get him up by the tail but I just couldn’t get a good enough grip on it because his peduncle was so thick; I flipped him around and had to lift him by the jaws. He must ahem been a beauty, and even bigger, while he was still in saltwater.
After all the carcasses were heaved into the brush and we’d packed the net away for the last time, Tim walked/swam the tubed fish down the river to the pull out, and we followed in the raft. High above us the side of the mountain still burns, in the water below fish scattered as our shadow passed over. The tubed fish were run up to the transport truck and released into the tank for transport for holding back at the hatchery.
Another year on the river came to a close for me today; another year of meeting and connecting with new staff, and bantering and reconnecting with the longer-time crew. Answering questions on the river like “Hey Paige, what are these weird looking things on this pink salmon’s tongue??” keeps me on my toes, and I learned about plants that I hadn’t seen previously “Hey Tim, what is this killer thorn tree that is giving me very painful acupuncture as I am stuffed in behind Trinity trying to cast shade while she strips this female?”.
