Guide Photos

Continuing up the river we saw several grizzly bears that I was not able to photograph but the guest got some great pictures. We came to one bend in the river and there were two sub-adult grizzly bears slowly coming down river. I pulled the skiff to one side of the river and they came down the opposite bank. This took about fifteen minutes as the bears were fishing for salmon as they worked their way past us. These pictures are not really clear as I was holding the boat while waste deep in the water and using one hand to focus but I can assure you that the guest got some great pictures and memories. The comment was that “I wouldn’t want to be any closer.”  I agreed.

The other side of the viewing stands from yesterday’s posting shows a grizzly bear enjoying a meal. The time of the spawning season determines how much of the salmon the bears eat. When the salmon first arrive and the bears are the hungriest they eat the complete salmon and the same occurs at the end of the season when they want to get as fat as possible. In between these times grizzly bears are selective in their eating habits often catching only female salmon for their eggs. Also only eating the skin with its layer of fat, which is desirable, as is the brain. This bear is about 20 meters (60 ft.) from the viewing stands and has one interest and that is food.

The drive to the viewing stands from the finger of land where we leave the skiff takes fifteen minutes through the treed hillside along the river. The posting on January 1, 2014 shows a google map of the river and the location of the spawning channel with the viewing stands. The photo in this posting shows the number of the salmon in the natural river on one side of the stands on the other side of the stands at the entrance to the wier and spawing beds the salmon are even more abundant. The Department of Fisheries closes the entranc to the spawning channel once 80,000 pink salmon have entered the remaining (400,000 or more on a good year) salmon spawn in the natural river.

When we go to shore to drive up the river we land on a finger of land that was an approach to a dock once used by a logging camp. The first photo is the view looking out of the Glendale River estuary and up Knight Inlet. The River is about half way up Knight Inlet which means the Inlet extends for another 72 kilometers (45 miles) to the head. The second photo is looking into the mouth of the River as you can see the stern of the skiff from yesterdays posting. This photo was taken at high tide as the tops pilings you can see may be 5 meters (15 ft.) out of the water at a low tide.

Great photo of “the one that got away”. Grizzly bear watching from the viewing stands on Knight Inlet’s Glendale River takes place after August 24th. This photo was taken from the finger stand, which overlooks the holding pool where the salmon wait before going into the spawning channel. In this case the grizzly was about seven meters (21 feet) below the stand at the edge of the pool. The water at this point is about a meter and half (4-5 feet) deep and it is really hard to catch a salmon in deep water most of the fishing on this side of the stand is picking up dead or wounded salmon that have drifted into the pool.  The other side of the stand is the natural river, which offers better fish but not as easy catching. It appears that this bear was trying some river fishing techniques without much success.

This is a great picture of a sub-adult grizzly in BC’s Glendale River estuary in the spring. The long looking legs because of the absence of a fat belly means that sedge grass and protein from turning over rock is this bear’s main food source.
Sub-adult or juvenile grizzly bears refer to the age they leave their mother and they reach sexual maturity. Depending on food abundance mother grizzlies may keep their yearlings a second (even a third) year, denning together again and breaking up in the third (or fourth) year. The average breeding age for female grizzlies is 4.5 years. Males reach sexual maturity at roughly the same age as their female counterparts. Even though males are capable of breeding at three or four years of age, they rarely have the opportunity to do so because of intense competition from older, bigger males.

The bears move into the water and down river still looking for salmon. This mother and cubs are quite fat for this time of the season so their daily routine of walking the river in search of food must be a successful.  Not that these pictures were taken with a point and shoot Pentax Opti 6mp 3X Optical Zoom I can only imagine the quality of the photos my guests obtained with their long lens camera and then again maybe we were to close.