“I fell in love with fly fishing after catching my first trout on a fly rod. This opened the door and gave me the confidence to try other things I thought I could no longer do like tying my shoes!” With this new found confidence, Josh went home to Roanoke, Virginia in 2007 and enrolled in Old Dominion University to study mechanical engineering. He also began actively volunteering and participating with his local PHWFF Program and discovered his passion for fly tying. Josh recalls that first meeting, “One evening, we had our first tying class with the vets at the Salem VAMC. I decided to try so I couldn’t give the vets there an excuse not to. And when it was all said and done, I tied the ugliest most pathetic woolly bugger ever tied! But I TIED IT!!! I took one of our kits home and it was all over. I was hooked.” Mastering fly tying is a difficult task for anyone and more challenging for someone with one-arm. But what makes Josh unique is his tenacity and fly tying brought a new challenge to the table As time progressed, he founded Dead Drift Flies to sell his increasingly in-demand hand-tied flies.. A symbol of his success is that The Orvis Company now sells three of Josh’s fly patterns in their prestigious catalog.
Which each success, Josh sought new challenges and soon took on the role of PHWFF Program Lead at the Salem Veteran Affairs Military Center, “Being a participant back in 2006 healing me in more ways than one, he says, but volunteering is possibly even more rewarding.” The increasing desire to pay it forward also led to him actively advising fellow veterans participating within the organization. Ed Nicholson recalls, “he became our go-to guy when someone needed advice about how to cope with the loss of an entire arm. He embraced fly fishing with a passion.” Ever determined, Josh’s passion for the sport led to a truly profound understanding of the mechanics and execution of fly fishing. He became a remarkable angler and fly tier who began professionally offering his services. As awardwinning outdoors writer Ed Felker noted, “I’ve spent some time trout fishing with Josh and he is a very good trout fisherman. On small water, the expert deployment of the roll cast gets his line across the stream and his fly to land gently. But watching him fish from greater distances, while standing in a kayak using his foot to move the rudder and his teeth to strip in a bass is a thing of beauty.” Dead Drift Flies soon expanded to become Dead Drift Outfitters and he started hosting guided excursions to the rivers and
Bobby Body
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HOMELAND / October 2016