Fulton’s Blog - Words from the water

the last few trips have been a bit of a let down as far as the fish catching is concerned. we have managed to put at least one fish in the boat on every trip except for one skunked day. that is hardly what i would call good fishing, and certainly not the type of fishing i thought we were going to see this year. it started out good and then just kind of bottomed out. there are still a few more weeks to a month of good fishing time left so it could still pick up. as far as the wildlife sightings are concerned, this season has been great. we have seen bears up close on each of the last three trips and on the last one we saw a mom and two cubs swim across the river right in front of us and around the bend a big cinnamon bear cruising the shore less than 50 yards from our boat. we have been seeing eagles regularly as well. this year has provided the rare treat of a pair of mature golden eagles calling our section of river home. quite an impressive sight. another curious observation is the large number of salmon spawning here in the lower river. they usually spawn higher up, but this year they seem to be all over the place. in another week or two the bald eagles will be here to feed on them as they finish spawning and wash up on the banks. this could also account for the many up close bear sightings as they seem to be cruising the riverbanks looking for fish so intently that they don’t even notice us watching them.