By Tom Reed

On the sixth and last stop of our Best Wild Places tour, Tom Reed, of Trout Unlimited, spent a few days fishing and hunting in the Yaak, situated in Northwest Montana. Here is Reed’s report from day three.

We wrapped up yesterday with a short drift down the Kootenai. After catching that bull trout, the float itself was almost anticlimactic for me, but I tore myself away from reliving the moment, to the river. The Kootenai harbors mostly rainbow trout, but westslope cutthroat also swim its waters. I caught a dozen of each while Linehan rowed, talking about the river that he loves, and the bill that would protect and improve its headwaters.

This morning, we woke to more rain but we decided to hunt, despite the damp. Kevin and Bridget and Tim and I piled into the pickup and drove through the Yaak canopy to a mountain that faded up into the fog. For a person used to big open skies—to the Big Sky Country of the rest of Montana—the Yaak seemed sullen and foreboding at times, but then I looked closer, to the lushness of the forest, to the stunning fall colors among the orange-barked larch. A tree that to the layman looks like a pine with bark that looks like a ponderosa pine and needles that are similar to those of a Douglas fir, the larch turns yellow each fall and sheds those needles. Among the green depth of a forest of conifer, such a landscape is stunning in its range of color. [ Read Full Post ]