Craig Mathews got his start in the fly-fishing business when he and his wife Jackie opened Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone in 1980, and over the next three to four decades, they established their company as one of the nation’s most highly regarded fly shops. Along the way, Craig authored and co-authored many books on fly fishing, including The Yellowstone Fly-Fishing Guide, Simple Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing the Madison, Fly Patterns of Yellowstone, Fishing Yellowstone Hatches, and Western Fly-Fishing Strategies.

The dead tree that had fallen over the river was messing up my ability to fish the pool and generally pissing me off. It was pretty skeletal and rickety-looking, though, so it occurred to me that I might be able to break off at least the top portion—enough to create a casting lane. This stream improvement project would render the pool a dead zone for the immediate future but it had the potential to pay big dividends that evening if the Brown Drake hatch I was hoping for materialized. That was my thinking at the time, anyway.