Video clip: Brown bears of the Brooks River in AK

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

http://vimeo.com/70732548

Some years back Joe Shirshac to lots of friends to the Brooks in July for the big Sockeye salmon run.

It is the place to see lots of Brown bears eating salmon.

[TaylerW]

brooks is a really amazing river. so far this year there are drastically less sockeye. this fishing is about to get good, as soon as the sockeye start to drop eggs...

[Rick J]

A group of 4 of us went up there in 1979 - no improvements like now at the falls. We stayed at the Forest Service Camp Ground. About 4 days in a bear named Sister entered out tent through the front flap and exited through the rear wall. Taking a friend's plaid shirt and a box of maybe 30 flies. She also hooked a back pack that was strung in a tree that only had some clothes and an unused coffee pot which she bit - still think I have that pot with big teeth marks in it!!!Tore up sleeping bags and just made a mess!! (Luckily we were not in the bags at the time!!)

She had been abandoned as a cub so did not know much about how to fish so was a scavenger. Park folks shot here with a tranc gun and shipped here across the lake but said she would be back in a few days. Park folks were very kind and put us up in some cabins under construction for the remainder of our stay.

A couple of years later, I saw Sister on the cover of Alaska Magazine with a cub!!!

Really awesome trip - got a bit boring on the sockeye after awhile so spent a lot of time targeting trout but must say sockeye are an amazing aerial fighter and great fun!!!!