We’ve had a stormy, windy summer interspersed with moments of calm perfection here on Kodiak Island.
Nearly every group this summer has at least partially consisted of returning guests who have visited Munsey’s Bear Camp many times over the years and have become our good friends. I will go into more detail about each group in my end-of-the-summer newsletter. In this post, I’ll share the highlights of the summer so far.
We run our trips from early July until mid-September, and the focus follows nature’s cycle. The pink salmon run occurs from mid-July until early August. That is when we fish for pink salmon in the river, and the bears trap and eat salmon in the tidal flats. As the salmon move upriver, so do the bears, and by September, we enjoy spectacular bear viewing as the bears begin gorging themselves with salmon to put on extra weight in preparation for hibernation. The silver salmon (Coho) arrive in the ocean in late August and then move into the rivers in September. We fish for halibut throughout the season.
We enjoyed good salmon fishing in Brown’s Lagoon in July and had several grilled salmon lunches on the beach. While we haven’t caught many large halibut this summer, the halibut fishing has been good and consistent.
Bear viewing on the salmon streams improves daily as more salmon swim upstream to spawn, and the bears congregate to feed on them. We didn’t see many whales early in the summer, but in late August, we saw fin whales and a very active humpback. We even had the thrill of watching orcas speed past our boat.
Our weather this summer has been worse than usual, and we have had three groups of guests delayed for an extra night either at our lodge, in Kodiak, or in Anchorage because the weather was unflyable. This is an excellent time to remind all future guests to plan to spend one night in Kodiak prior to your flight to our lodge and another night in Kodiak after you leave Munsey’s Bear Camp. Kodiak has unpredictable weather even in the summer, so plan a little extra time in your schedule to account for unflyable days.
We still have two weeks remaining in our season, and they are sure to be spectacular! I will tell you about them and supply more details about each of our summer groups in the end-of-the-season newsletter and blog post.
Robin