Enchanted by Donna

WHILE the salmon eluded Val Shoote during his fishing adventure in remote Alaska, a native seemed happy to show off her fishing prowess.

Relaxed ... Donna the bear shows off her fishing skills in the cold waters of Redoubt Bay in Alaska.

WHY go to Redoubt Bay? For the bear. Or to be more precise, to get close enough to a bear to check out just what it had for breakfast. To get close enough for a photograph that would make all the travelling there worthwhile. And thanks to Donna, pictured, that's what happened.

Redoubt Bay Lodge, on the shores of the bay, is a remote salmon fishing and bear-viewing lodge at the sea entrance to Lake Clark National Park, on the northern Katmai Peninsula of Alaska. The only access is by seaplane.

Overlooking the water and perched on a hill, the lodge is a cluster of log cabins, the original one expanded to become the lounge, dining room, kitchen, reception and office. Three guest cabins, staff cabins, boathouse and outhouses complete the settlement set against a backdrop of dense forest reaching down from dramatic mountain ranges to the shoreline.

I had arrived for an overnight stay and had my personal guide, Natalia.

The accommodation proved fine – cosy lakeside log cabin, pot-belly stove, queen bed covered in a bear-print doona – but I was there for the real thing – bear. Both black and brown bears inhabit the area, and as the salmon were starting their migration to the streams of their birth, my expectations were high.

I particularly wanted to see the bears because they are reputed to be much larger than those in southern Alaska and Canada. These coastal browns have the advantage of eating the nutritious salmon rather than just berries and the occasional unfortunate, thus giving them a dietary advantage in the race to fatten up before winter.

Our large fibreglass viewing boat nosed into small bays with beaver lodges and bald eagle nests and cruised past floating bogs – rafts of spongy sedges and plants that send down anchoring roots that trap silt from the glacial runoff. Eventually these areas are colonised by bushes and trees and become land.

I watched as a black bear walked down a bear trail, stopped and looked at us while sniffing the air, then continued along the trail, in and out of sight through the bushes.

Further on, another black bear decided to swim across the cove to another sedge bank. Although we kept the required distance behind him, he was eager to climb out of the water and at the sound of a departing floatplane, burst into a clumsy, bounding gallop.

Natalia is also a fishing guide and my interest was sparked when she nosed into one of her favourite fishing spots only to find that others had found it and were catching large salmon.

We swapped boats to a tinnie with an outboard motor and headed for Wolverine Falls, where Wolverine Creek tumbles over forest rocks into a cove. Sockeye and silver salmon were massing at the entrance to the creek. A few boats of people were anchored there and from time to time, triumphantly hauling in large fish.

Looking into the water I could see the salmon below me, swimming in and out of the clear salt water then into the silty fresh water from the stream. Some salmon had changed their colours from silver to bright red and had developed huge fighting jaws, in preparation for the mating battles ahead in the stream. How could I fail to catch a fish in all this seething mass?

Very easily, as it turned out.

But here was a compensation – a brown bear sighting after dinner.

There it was, a huge specimen walking along the sedge banks, in the distance. By the time the boat was ready, that bear had disappeared, so back to Wolverine Creek we motored.

A black bear was there, catching a salmon trying to wriggle its way up the creek. It was starting to eat the fish when suddenly it dropped its catch and moved off quickly. A brown bear emerged from the bushes, leisurely taking over the black bear's catch before loping around to see what else was there for the taking.

Natalia recognised the bear as a four-year-old female lodge staff have named Donna.

Donna didn't mind us sitting in the boat taking photos as she poked around rocks, picking up the occasional discarded fish carcass and eating whatever she fancied.

Eventually she waded into the water to continue her search, dredging up fish that had become too weak to get out of her way, and sitting in the water with her catch in her paws and eating the bright red flesh.

Her head and face looked just like a large dog's.

She swam around and sat eating, barely two metres from our boat for about 10 minutes while I kept photographing her.

Eventually her twin sister, Amy, wandered down the bear trail from the other side of the cove. Amy didn't stay long and Donna eventually wandered off up the hill, leaving me enchanted.

A bear called Donna had made my whole journey worthwhile.