Bear In Camp | Slow Day On The Russian River

This weekend we went to the Russian River in Cooper Landing, Alaska. Our goal was to catch some salmon and have a relaxing weekend. We may have been too late for the run though! Working on our property has taken a lot longer than we planned and has changed our timeline for fishing and hunting. If we don't start catching fish soon we will have to really buckle down for hunting season so we have food for the winter.
Fishing on the Russian River has many rules and regulations through Fish and game. Here you have to use a single un-baited hook. The distance between the shank and the hook can be no larger than 3/8 . Any weights need to be 16 inches from the hook. Fish must be caught in the mouth by this hook. Any "foul hooked" fish, fish caught anywhere other than the mouth, must be returned to the river. On this weekend there was a limit of three fish per person.
The Russian River has two runs each year for Sockeye Salon. One in Late June and then another in Late July. The Russian River boasts a population brown and black bears, eagles, different species of ducks, trout, salmon and other animals. On this trip we even saw a wolf! Unfortunately the GoPro footage we took didn't show this in enough detail to post in the video.
On our first day at the Russian we saw 5 fish and hooked into one. The fish are hard to catch here due to the fast currents. On the second day we cast out hoping to bring home a fish but didn't see any in the river. We did on this day see the wolf! This was our first time spotting a wolf on this river. When we got back to camp we sat down for dinner. The mosquitoes were horrible! While we ate dinner and talked about what our plan was, since we didn't catch any fish, we heard a rustle but didn't see anything. We started to chat and heard the sound again. Looking down the trail from our camp we spotted a brown bear within 10 yards of where we were sitting eating dinner! Up we jumped to grab our bear spray and the GoPro.
The bear sat down and watched us for awhile. We were shooed him along but he ran right up the hill back at where we were camped! After he left we heard our neighbors shouting and shooing the bear away. After this we packed everything up and went to bed, in the van.
The next morning, Ronin woke us up barking when we sat up we saw the bear right outside the van window with a set of our waders! We began yelling and the bear took off! Once we got out of the van we traced where the bear went and found the waders, with a hole in them but still useable. We then walked the dogs and packed up camp to head back home.
We're going to try our luck pike fishing next weekend but really have to figure out how we're going to get our salmon for the season.