Grizzly Bear Climbs into Fisherman's Boat

I recently went back to Alaska to see my long time fly fishing buddy, Ron. I stayed at one of his guest cabins for 12 days and we fished everyday except one. Upon my arrival he told me that in 30 years of living in Sterling that this year seemed to have an unusual amount of grizzly encounters. Even his dumpster by cabin 6 (my cabin) had several visits from a sow and her 2 cubs in the previous week so I had to ride in a car at night when I visited the main house instead of the 300 yard hike which was considered OK in the daytime. Ron's chicken coop with the radiant heating in the floor had a new electric fence around it to keep bears out. Many of his neighbors saw grizzlies at their homes for the first time ever this summer and there was a jogger killed near the launch ramp at Skilak Lake where we took his boat 3 times to fish the inlet.
The inlet of the lake is the Upper Kenai River and it has Dolly Varden and Rainbows which are caught on egg patterns or beads. I caught a 4 pound Dolly and a 7 pound Rainbow there, but the potential for much bigger fish kept us going back. We anchored the boat by a sand bar each time and wade fished nearby.
The first time there, we saw the blond grizzly which I think was about a 500 pound male. It was my first sighting ever of a grizzly in the wild. I had seen a lot of scat and footprints in my visits and during the 3 years I lived there, but never saw the bears themselves. I have seen them up real close in the back room of their grottoes when I used to work at San Francisco Zoo. This one was a playful bear that had been seen at Skilak daily for several weeks. Ron saw it the week before I got there. One camper heard him breathing on his tent the night before and saw him damage the wiring and gas lines of a boat. He decided to leave after one night's "sleep".

We watched the bear go for a swim and then nibble on a dead sockeye which he grabbed from the bottom of the river and then he went into the grass area with another dead salmon from the beach and I assumed he was gone. When I waded back to the boat I looked up at the grass area and he was looking at me with what looked a frown from about 150 yards away. I wasn't sure what to do. I tried to look uninterested in eating from the pile of dead sockeye that I was stepping on so he wouldn't get into a turf thing with me and I walked gingerly to the boat. Then Ron and I took off without incident.
The next day we went back and when the bear came out to the water after about 3 hours of us fishing, he went almost immediately to Ron's boat and started to nip playfully at the orange ball float that was attached to the anchor line. We were fishing 200 yards away. He punctured the float and then picked up a dead sockeye from the under the water and placed it in the boat and was doing something to it while standing in the water and leaning into the boat. Then he took the salmon out and climbed in himself. At this time a guide boat motored about 100 feet from Ron's boat and blew his air horn and the bear jumped out and made a casual retreat in the direction of the previous day's grassy area and not toward us - phew! The only damage to the boat was a small rip in a 25 year-old yellow life jacket and a couple of pieces of jerky were taken from the open package we left in the boat. We felt like the smell of the jerky was why he went straight to our boat.
The third day we planned to go to Skilak, but couldn't due to the white caps on the lake. Of course, I complained to Ron about not going back. For some reason Ron has bear spray and lots of guns, but never takes them anyplace. I try to act cool around Ron like I love seeing bears, but I would prefer to be well armed.

We drove the truck to another spot downstream on the Kenai River which had tons of bear scat and nibbled sockeye carcasses. I again saw a bear about a quarter mile downstream. It looked very dark and was probably a black bear. We never saw it again after it darted into the woods heading our direction. I caught a 7 pound dolly there on a yellow bead.

In a way, now I am a little more relaxed about grizzlies than before. When you are in their presence and unarmed, time seems to stand still and you have excellent focus. Then, when it leaves without attacking, you feel this wonderful exhilaration that lasts for weeks. I left Alaska, worried that this bear will inevitably be shot by someone. What I hope to do is never get killed by one and that one of them never gets killed. I would like to accomplish both by never stepping into their domain again, but unfortunately, Ron just called me 2 days ago and I have to go back there this summer.