Lake Baikal, Russia

I caught a program called Wild Russia on Planet Green tonight. They visited Lake Baikal, the largest body of fresh water on the earth. 1/4 of all fresh water on the surface of the planet is in there. There was a particularly interesting part where the caught a massive caddis fly hatch on the banks of the lake. It looked like a brown cloud. The strange part was watching a brown bear feeding on the flies as they scrambled to lay eggs on the rocks along the shore. Evidently a bear likes bugs. So think about that next time you are fishing a section of backwoods water.

It's kind of mind boggling trying to think of why a huge 900 Ibs+ brown bear would eat small bugs when they have salmonand trout. Protein is about the only reason I can come up with. It's like a brown trout keying onto #30 midges. They're tiny insects that have to be eaten in massive numbers. A few caddis aren't gonna do it it for a bear...

Well, it was a lot of caddis flies. The shots they showed looked like hundreds crawling on the rocks. The narrator said that it was for additional protein but I think they would try for something substantial. They have a freshwater seal population but I imagine they are super hard to catch.