The Best Fisherman

Tonight at the falls I saw one of our very large dominant males. His name is Lurch. I hear tell that he is not the greatest fisherman in the group. His way to get fish is to stand behind the bear that is the best and when it catches a fish he takes it away. But tonight it is just him at the falls and me watching. He positions himself in the bowl. It is an area where the water churns and the salmon have a lower leap to get over the falls. He stands there with his mouth wide open waiting for a salmon to jump right in. Unfortunately for Lurch there are not that many salmon in the river yet. The Alaska Game and Fish are in charge of the commercial fishing and they have let the fishing vessels take a large number of fish and the escapement has been low so far. The escapement is the number of fish that haven't been caught by the vessels. Today was the first day that they stopped the fishing to let the salmon swim on through. It will take a few days to get here though.

So while I am watching Lurch try very hard to catch a fish for himself. I see this gull standing on the shore line. Its small, beady eyes trained on the water. Then he hopped down in to the water and grabbed a fish. He returned to the shore and watched the water. Within a minute he had caught another fish. I watched him catch five fish and then looked at poor Lurch standing in the cold water smacking his lips. You could see he was all ready savoring the taste.

Back to the little gull. He was swallowing another fish. He caught fish after fish. Then another gull tried to join him on the shore but he was not having nothing to do with sharing. He was back to the shore and with in minutes he had another fish. While poor Lurch was still standing and waiting. I stopped counting how many fish the gull ate after an hour and Lurch decided that he had enough and wandered out of the water. The gull had ate 30 fish, not sure where the bird put them all.