Fishing with the Fam, Part 2

I'm normally not one to hire a guide, but with the family visiting we wanted to take a big trip and do something a bit out of the ordinary. An acquaintance of ours, Jeremy, operates a guide service on the Kenai River specializing in big ol' rainbows. He runs a great operation and hooked us into some stupid-big fish.
I might have landed the first fish, but Dad caught the biggest of the day. It was fairly early in the day but, after getting horsed around for a while and running all over the river, Dad finally wrestled it in.

As our guide said, "you'll have a hard time getting any bigger than that."
Josh and I were fishing on a separate boat from the rest of the herd, and Josh more than pulled his own weight. In addition to a ton of rainbows and a few dolly varden, Josh ripped some sockeye lip. It's usually easier to line these guys than to hook them legitimately and, if there is one type of fish that will reject your fly consistently, it's a sockeye. Josh didn't receive the memo.
He also hooked the big fish for our boat. After fishing beads all day, Josh spent a little while fishing a flesh fly. I'm not sure I've seen another salmonid take as hard as this fish did. We were drifting by a log jam at the top of a small side channel when his rod took a big hit. Within a fraction of a second, Josh's line was ripping off the reel in one direction while his fish was jumping off in another direction. You'd think they weren't connected. After a long trip downstream, Josh finally won the upper hand and brought this monster in. Sweet!Just in case anyone was wondering, I did alright . . .
Although The Wife out-fished me once again.
There seems to be fewer pictures of those who carry the camera, but, we all got into fish.
Beyond all the big fish, the real sub-plot didn't develop until after the fishing. We worked our way down to a nearby campground and, undeterred by this massive pile of bear scat, we started to set up camp.
High on the our recent fishing exploits, we set up camp, ate dinner and debated the finer points of the s'more. According to some, it's the dark chocolate that makes the difference. Others prefer the peanut butter cup. Either way, you need the patience to properly roast the marshmallow.

Being the day after labor day, we literally had the campground to ourselves. Having seen four grizzly bears earlier in the day, and as often happens after dark, the talk quickly turned to bears. On cue, we heard rocks shuffling along the banks of the nearby lake. Handing Dad the bear spray and grabbing the gun, we were treated to a medium-sized bear walking by camp, silhouetted by lake shore about 30 feet away. Black bear . . . grizzly bear . . . I'm not sure. However, when faced with a bear that close, it seemed BIG. Fortunately, it never even looked up at us and moved along on its way.

After things settled a bit, The Wife and I wandered into the next campground to hit the head and drop a few things off in the bear box. Seconds later, hearing more rustling in the bushes, I called over to the rest of crew, "you all have Karta?"

"Yeah, she's right here," I heard back.

Game on . . . again. Another, slightly smaller bear wandered by, this time stopping to smell the roses a bit. Although on a slightly slower pace, it seemed relatively unconcerned with our affairs and moved on along the lake shore.

Needless to say, it took a long time to fall asleep that night.

Since it was night and I was a bit preoccupied at the time, we never managed to take a picture of either bear. However, we did manage to come across this guy on the next day.