The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-04-23
BEAR LANDED A SALMON.
How a Grizzly Gets His Fish Dinners
by His Own Angling.
Philadelphia North American.)


pool of one of the Oregon streams for
winter steeIhead with poor success,
did you ever see a bear go fishing?"
The listener and looker-on confessed
that he had not.
We'll, that's just where you have
missed the funniest sight in your life.
Bears are natural-born fishermen and.
not so clumsy as you might think, and
it takes lot to ruffie the nerve of
bear. once saw grizzly standing up
right on a bee ranch with a hive I'M
der one arm, trying to get at the
| honey, while the bees were raining
down on him; but they didn't worry
him. But it is in fishing that the
| average bear displays his 'savy.'
There is a great bear country, or
| rather there was in the southwest part
OF Oregon and the northwest of Cali
fornia, where the country isn't much
hunted, and one fall when / was on
deer hunt l camped out on a branch
OF the Rogue River mountains. 1t was
good trout stream, and the salmon
We're coming up in way that made
a man crazy. On every flat we could
see them running aground. and in the
swallows making big waves this way
and that IT was an easy matter to
wade in and club them up onto the
beach. had camped on a narrow run
and was lying in my sleeping bag one
morning about sunrise, when / awoke
suddenly with kind of start and saw
! not loo feet away a cinnamon bear
he looked as big as an OK to me.
AT first 1 thought he was bathing,
as he stood shoulder deep in the stream,
standing as still and quiet as a statue;
but all at once he gave a side blow,
sort of dipping motion, with his paw,
and thirty-pound salmon went whiz-
zing out into shallow water, Mr.. Bear
galloping after him. The salmon kick
ed up tremendous fuss, leaping half
out, rolling over, and would have got
away but the bear nailed him with one
of his terrible claws, dragging him out
and began to eat him, a cub coming
out of the brush to share the feast
II had an idea that the bear stood
in the water until he felt a salmon
run against his legs, as they were so
thick at times that the river seemed
to be solid mass of fish, but 1t SEEM
ed too much of fish story. One day
1 told the man what I had seen the
cinnamon do and he told me the fol-
lowing:
The first time,' he said, L ever
saw bear go fishing was in Canada
on the east coast / had boon fish
ing up stream and one day we came
| to a rapid where the water poured
| over rocky ridge. On either side were
numerous potholes of various depths
| and sizes and alongside of them were
the bones of salmon. as though some
one had been camping out.
My guide, an Indian, laughed when
l made the suggestion. Him bear, he
take him, grab him, catch a salmon"
l could not believe that a bear could
catch a salmon from such a stream.
so l camped near by and after sew
erai days of watching / was repaid by
seeing a run of salmon
As they went up the steep half
fall about one in ten fell out on the
side and in its struggles landed in a
convenient pc hole. During that ex-
citing and eventful day at least six
or eight of these fish were trapped in
this way. Two or three days later my
man called me in the night and creep
ing out 10 the fall 1 saw a bear, and
later two, feeding on salmon which
they fished up out of the potholes, and
by morning they had cleaned them out,
leaving only the bones to tell the
story
IF you want to see bear fishing
though, continued the angler, You
should go to Alaska. Some years ago
l made a four months hunt on Admir-
atty island, where the giant bears of
the world live. big fellows weighing
over LOO pounds, and looking as large
as short-legged bison. Ny guide told
me that the bears know when the sal
mon runs begin as well as a man, and
that he has seen them tossing out SAL
mon Ike a fisherman, standing right
up to it. To tell the truth, I took it
as fish story and bear story COM
bined, and in a weak moment Offered
| the fellOw-a white man-S20 extra if
he could show me such a sight l never
l'lost money so easily in my life as it
wasn't six weeks later that / was sit
ting in the brush watching that very
thing.
Il had been something of a bear
hunter all my life, and had killed about
all the bears found in America; but
these big Alaskan bears took the prize
1 don't know that they weigh any more
than good grizzly. but certainly
big brown or kadiak bear in prime
condition looks a third larger than a
grizzly. He seems TO have a hump like
buffalo and his coat is a most ex-
traordinary affair; and when Mr.. Ursa
is mad and his fur is on end he is
sight. We had good luck. and I am
convinced that the man who got into
the country some twenty years ago
must have seen flocks of bears, and
sight worth SEEING
About the last of June the bears de-
eide to go a-fishing, and if you want
them your best chance is along the SAL
mon streams. How they know the SAL
mon run at that time / leave for the
nature writer's TO decide, but the fact
remains that just as a white man gets
the fishing fever in spring, so does the
big brown bear of Alaska, and hungry
and savage, he makes his way to the
streams and plays the mischief with
the salmon.
Three kinds of bear-grizzly, black
and brOwn-are common in this coun-
try, and they all fish. A tenderfoot in
the country would say that I'm certain
localities 1t was full of sheep or cattle,
as the tracks of bears cover the ground
and regular lanes are beaten through
the brush and moss.
My man selected place where the
river was fairly shallow, and we lay on
the top of a neighboring rock surround
ed by stones, which we piled up as a
sort of barricade and from which we
could command half a mile up and down
the stream. About s O'Clock he called
my attention TO a bear crossing a fiat
some 200 yards distant on the other side
of the stream. The big fellow walked