Montana, Idaho, and my Good Friend Tom

Saturday evening, as many of you already know, I boarded a plane for the west. I was flying into Spokane Washington to meet up with an old buddy of mine, from my guiding days in Alaska. Tom Larson, is a great friend if mine, when he is not guiding and fishing in Alaska, be is a resident of a small Idaho town, Kellogg, and fishes the the local rivers around his town. So when I decided I wanted to head out for a pre-runoff fishing trip, he was the first person I called. We made plans and off I went.

Boarding the plane we still didn't have a set plan on where we would go, but either way it was going to be awesome. Arriving the conditions in norther Idaho didn't look great, so we loaded up the the truck and headed east into Montana. Bitterroot and Beaverhead were the two we wanted to fish the most. Skwalas on the Bitterroot, and wadable flows on the Beaverhead, lets see what happens.

Well two days on the Bitterroot only rendered two fish, we were, as they say "a day late and a dollar short". Skwalas were over and the fish were full. So it was off to the Beaverhead, after a beautiful drive over the Bitterroot mountains and through the Big Hole valley, we were sitting on the banks of the Beaverhead looking down river at, what I would say, was the coolest river I've ever seen. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story. But I will say, only seeing three boats, and two other people in two days, was nothing short of amazing.

Then it was back to Idaho for sate number six in my ten state quest for 2013, everything was high and blown out. But I did manage to find a small gem, check it out. East coast meets West coast.