Now I usually go fishing with a couple of friends, or at least with my best friend. However, this time, I was unable to get anyone to go fishing with me to the Deshka River in Southeast Alaska. That didn't bother me as much as the fact that I didn't own any weapons at the time and going into the bush of Alaska unarmed is an unsafe venture. Bears and moose abound and can make a puddle out of you in no time flat. Much less a meal. Well I almost always take a shotgun, but again, I was unable to. So I took a 44mag revolver I borrowed from my friend Rick Miller. This is not enough to take out a bear for sure, but it was what I could get, and I wanted to go, BAD!
So I took the usual trip to Willow from Anchorage on a gorgeous Alaska summer day and waited for my turn to get a ride to Neil Lake. I was friends with the owners of Willow Air and took space available to get a better price. Well, it was getting late and I was finally able to talk one of the pilots into taking me in his Piper Cub Float plane as the last ride of the day. Now at 7:00PM in Alaska in July, it is light all night, so I wasn't really worried about walking the quarter mile from Neil Lake to the Deshka, except for the prospect of startling a bear or running into a moose on the way. It is thick brush and not an easy walk. No trails, no markers and plenty of massive swarms of mosquitoes.
Now I should have known at this point that nothing was going to go the normal way when we flew over the area getting ready to touch down on the lake and I saw no one down or up river for as far as I could see. Usually there were at least a couple of people camping up river of our favoirite spot. But I was already there and decided to go.
Immediately after I unloaded my gear, I sprayed myself down with mosquito repellant. In the Alaska bush, the mosquito swarms are thick and you can end up with them in your nose, ears, mouth and clothes. They look for any unprotected areas. I then started my trek down to the river and set up camp to get ready to fish. By now it was about 8:30 and the sun was still above the horizon. (I again had to spray myself with repellant as the first spray had worn off by my sweat and I was beginning to get swarmed again.)
Now our favorite spot was a decent size sandy gravel outcropping with a small creek running into the fast moving Deshka. What made it great was that we could set our lures into the current from the creek and it would hold our lures in the river so we wouldn't have to keep reeling in and casting out. We could stick our poles into the ground and relax until we got a bite. But you have to be quick when you are fishing for salmon. Anywhere from 12 to 40 pounds can take you rod in a heartbeat. I started a fire to let any animals in the area know that someone was here and to hopefully deter them from coming into camp. I always take MREs, (military rations called Meals Ready to Eat), into the bush to keep the bears from being interested and to also allow for little waste and survival rations if need be.
I fished for a few hours catching nothing, till around midnight when I heard something in the brush about 50 yards down river from me. I ignored my fishing rod and concentrated on trying to determine how big and in what direction this noise was coming from. When the noise got to within about 20 yards of me, out bursts a cow moose and her calf into the river and bounded to the other side. Most people might think this is not that bad, but moose are a bad attitude wrapped in about 800 pounds of long legs and fur. But a mama moose with a calf is even worse. Good thing for me she decided not to cause me problems.
For the next coupls of hours, I couldn't concentrate on the fishing. I wasn't getting bites and yet, about every few minutes you could see another group of salmon swim upstream and go right past my best lures and bait. I wasn't having the fun I had come out here to have. The moose had spooked me and now I was hearing more noise behind me across the creek. There is a small rise at the back of the outcropping that kept me from seeing the creek and so I had to creep up on all fours to see what was making that noise. Well, when I got to the top of the rise, I saw a full grown brown bear drinking from the creek.