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My most memorable encounter was back in the late 80s. I was seining with a buddy in Kodiak. We left town for a 3 day opener, and ended up fishing 30 days in a row as the early red run that year was awesome. We were fishing at the Ayukulik River and Bumble Bay on the SW corner of Kodiak Is. Finally the 4th of July came and Fish and Game announced a 3 day closure. So we ran up Shelikof Straits to Larsen Bay (Not to be confused with Antone Larsen Bay on the Kodiak road system. We tied up at the cannery there and our skipper flew to Kodiak for supplies. A gal who crewed on our boat and I decided to hike up to the local reservoir just to get off the boat and stretch our legs. As I recall it was about a mile and a half up to the reservoir. We were about half way up and had just passed through a fence and gate on the road when I heard something pop in the brush below the road about 50 yards in front of us. I told Sheri we needed to stop as I thought there was a bear in front of us and sure enough a big round head suddenly appeared out of the brush. Then the bear stepped out onto the road. He stared right at us, then would pretend we weren't there and act casual. Then he'd suddenly turn his head to stare at us, then back to pretending we weren't there. Meanwhile, we backed up against a rock bluff and each picked up a couple big rocks as we had no weapons with us. I told Sheri if it came down to it for her to try to get down to get help and I'd do my best to slow him down which meant bad news for me. But there wasn't any point in trying to run as we had no chance to outrun him so our best bet was to hold our ground but not do anything to aggravate him and see if he would move off. In the middle of that discussion, the bear suddenly rolled over on his back in the grass along the road and started rolling around. Then he'd stop and stare at us, then lick himself, then start rolling in the grass, then stop to stare at us. It was quite a show, but nerve wracking at the same time. We were ooing and ahhing quietly to each other, then the bear started walking down the road to us. This was the moment of truth. But the bear got about 25 yards from us and suddenly he went back in the brush and we could hear him as he walked past us. About 25-30 yards past us, he came back up on the road and continued heading down to the village. (There was a salmon stream in town that local bears fed at) We decided we weren't ready to follow him too closely so we may as well continue our hiketo the reservoir, so we did. When we headed back to town, we never saw him or any other bears, thankfully. We'd had enough excitement for one day.
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