By the time this post pops up Sunday morning, I’ll be on an airplane heading to the International Fly Tackle Dealer Show in Orlando. It’s a gathering of the industry — manufacturers, shop owners, personalities… the fly-fishing industry comes together in our own little way to do business. Look forward to seeing many of you there; please seek me out if you’re around!
I was lucky enough to spend the early part of this week in far northwestern Montana, up in Kootenai River country with friends Tim and Joanne Linehan while on assignment for Yellow Dog Flyfishing Adventures. Linehan Outfitting Company does it right — from a friendliness that makes you feel like part of the family to utmost “fishiness” on the river — it was a solid, productive few days. (We fished with both Tim and Sean McAfee, and of note, these are the only guys I’ve seen “put their money where their mouth is” in terms of not using plastic water bottles on the river; we had reusable Yeti and Klean Canteen bottles every day. And some damn good lunches finishing with Joanne’s amazing fudge-like brownies.)
Yellow Dog’s Jake Wells and I drove up to Tim and Joanne’s place near Yaak, Montana, and spent the next day floating the Kootenai with Sean. To say it was a solid day would be putting it mildly. We ran into plentiful numbers of healthy rainbow trout throughout the course of the day, along with the requisite whitefish (keeping it native!). These ‘bows jumped like I’ve never seen before; happy, healthy, and simply gorgeous. It’s always a pleasure to photograph fish like these!
On the second day, we hiked into the Yaak with Tim, exploring some small water and connecting with the only rainbow trout native to Montana — the Inland Redband Rainbow. In the afternoon we headed back to the Kootenai for another quality float. It’s hard to beat Montana in the summer, and the northwest corner has to be my favorite part of the state.
Thanks to Tim, Joanne, Sean, and the whole LOC team for having us up! Already looking forward to a return visit.
In other news, I teamed up with Carryology this week to review my go-to travel kit — drilling all the way down to specifics. Check out the article for some fun imagery of gear in action in random places, and to see what makes the trip with me every time I go on assignment.
Next Sunday I’ll be summing up the week at IFTD here on Chi Wulff; stay tuned!
