His fly rod pointed aloft and a Ruger .357-caliber revolver in a holster at his side, Eric Mannon ducked through the six-foot grass, leading four companions deeper into a boot-sucking bog in Far North Bicentennial Park just south of Tudor Road.
Mannon stopped to listen to the silence.
"There's no reason why we won't see a bear," whispered Mannon, a 20-year-old from Portsmouth, Ohio, serving a tour with the U.S. Coast Guard in Anchorage. "We just need to be quiet."
It was a weekday evening. His buddy from the Coast Guard, Ian Wiley, carried a 12-gauge shotgun. Brandon Hoke, another Coastie, followed close through the jungly brush.
Just ahead lay the North Fork of Campbell Creek, riffled by red king salmon gone rotten during late July's spawn. The raggedy fish, some a yard long, were attended by native Dolly Varden char and rainbow trout snatching stray eggs and bits of flesh.
And there, right on the shore, several brown bear prints pressed deep into the mud. They were as large as platters.
The setting could be 100 miles from nowhere, a patch of real Alaska wilderness. But the noise of a bulldozer carried across the forest. An airplane droned above. A siren wailed from east-side streets.
Bear sign was everywhere, yet we stood maybe 500 yards from the Tudor-Muldoon curve, one of the busiest roads in the state. Bears are ripping into salmon less than a quarter mile from the manicured trails of the Alaska Botanical Garden and the parking lot of the Benny Benson Secondary School. They thrive in woods a few minute's walk from suburban lawns.
Mannon and a few other serious local anglers hike along this stream almost every evening after work. They catch and release Dollies and trout. They keep coming back despite what may be the densest gathering of brown bears this side of the Kenai Peninsula.
Only one day earlier Mannon was fishing alone when he heard heavy splashing around the bend. He retreated into the woods, then spied a bear cub running. When he emerged at the creek again, Mannon faced an eight- or nine-foot grizzly nicknamed Blondie by other anglers, standing broadside on the other bank. There was a flash of brown downstream and more splashing.
Mannon called it quits for the night.
"I was basically in a triangle of bears and I didn't feel too safe," he said later.
He decided not to fish alone again.
State biologists hope that North Fork fishermen like Mannon do the same: travel in groups, make noise, carry some sort of protection.
Talking won't bother the fish, but the bears will usually retreat from human voices, said Dan Bosch, a state sportsfishing biologist who works the North Fork only with others watching his back.
"You can't see over the grass anywhere along that creek," said Jessy Coltrane, assistant area biologist with the state Division of Wildlife Conservation. "You have reduced visibility, and the creek's making a lot of noise so there's reduced audibility. You can't hear the bears, and they can't hear you, and then the fishermen are trying to be quiet because they're sneaking up on trout.
"It's a potentially dangerous situation any time you're sneaking along a salmon creek in Alaska. The difference here is we're a community where people don't realize we have brown bears right here in town."
Why take such chances? Duffy Blume, the lean, gravelly voiced dean of North Fork anglers, says it's a good question.
"It's called an obsession and passion for fishing," he said. "No one else goes in there, so you can find peace and quiet in the middle of 300,000 people."
"It's all I do, just about every day of the week," is how Mannon puts it.
He began at 13, chasing Ohio bass and West Virginia trout. When the Coast Guard posted him to Anchorage last year, he began learning Alaska angling and became fascinated with salmon, trout and Dollies. Now, most weekends find him on the Kenai.
Weeknights, he works the North Fork.
"It's gorgeous," he said. "It's real clear. It's full of fish."
Mannon admits he wanted to see a bear. This was, after all, Alaska. In calls to family back home, they always asked: Seen a bear yet? Seen a bear yet?
"I finally got one," he said.
On Thursday evening, Mannon and Wiley parked at the Campbell Airstrip trail head. As Mannon rigged up a bead on his three-weight Sage outfit, Blume, who stopped by to say hello, gave advice on how to shoot if Blondie were to charge at close range
"Make sure you hit him in the brisket," he said. "Don't hesitate."
Then they walked a quarter mile to where the creek crossed under Campbell Airstrip Road. Hoke, another friend, was there walking his yellow lab. He decided to tag along.
Within about 40 minutes, the three men were bushwhacking knee deep in muck, leaping across little streams, ducking through cobwebs, pushing through scratchy spruce.
"Hopefully, we'll see a bear," Mannon said.
At the creek, a well-beaten trail traced along the bank, flattened by passing bear feet. Fish skeletons and chewed carcasses moldered in the grass. Bear scat. Fur on a branch.
But this night no bear presented itself.
So Mannon began to fish.
Soon he was walking knee deep in the creek, pants and shoes wet, drifting his bead through holes. The city was still there, its road noise like wind in the distance, but only the creek mattered. He caught one little Dolly, admired it, released it, and rolled the line again.
Wiley shouted from the woods. He had seen a bear on the hill, poking around in the forest a hundred yards off the creek.
"I racked a round, and it ran up into the woods," he said, flushed and excited.
Mannon never stopped fishing during the tale. A big Dolly hit his bead, and he played it for a moment, the rod pulling then relaxing. It was gone.
"There are plenty more downstream," he said. "Plenty more."
Bears and fish.
Daily News reporter Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com.
