Tying lures and fishing help put veteran on the road back from war

When Joe Bragg caught a live well full of big crappies Thursday, it represented one more step on his road to recovery.

Just two months ago, the Army veteran couldn’t imagine such moments would ever be enjoyed again.

“I was totally stressed out,” said Bragg, 36, who served two tours of duty in Iraq. “My life just hit rock bottom.

“At the time I couldn’t see any way out.”

After returning from the war, Bragg’s life unraveled. His wife left him, he lost his house, he couldn’t find a job, and he suffered from the effects of post traumatic stress disorder.

That’s when he turned to a unique kind of therapy. During the nights when he couldn’t sleep, he started tying feather crappie jigs. It was a craft he learned years ago from his father, who looked for unique lures that the fish hadn’t seen before.

For Bragg, it started as a way to get his mind off his troubles — to relax and forget life in the aftermath of war. He would buy feathers, chenille and Flashabou, and craft them into beautiful fishing lures.

If he made a few bucks selling them, all the better.

“I started tying jigs so I didn’t have to sit in front of Wal-Mart begging for money,” said Bragg, who lives in Topeka. “It was that bad.

“I was a master carpenter before I went into the service, but after you’ve been in the Army, your body gets banged up. The mind’s willing, but the body just can’t handle a lot of things.”

Bragg started displaying his homemade jigs on his Facebook page, Flint Hills Afield and Custom Tackle, and he was surprised to get a positive response from fishermen. That’s when he began a business selling those lures.

He truly is a custom builder. He ties his jigs to the customer’s desires. Purple, white and chartreuse? No problem. Bragg ties them up and usually has them in the mail within 36 hours.

He even takes his lure-building station with him in the boat. If he sees a situation that calls for a certain color pattern, he’ll take time to tie a few right there on the water.

The ultimate? Catching a big crappie with a lure he had made just minutes earlier.

He did that many times Thursday while fishing a private lake in the Kansas City area. Casting to rocky banks and slowly retrieving his lures with a jigging motion, he caught a combination of crappies, bass and bluegills. All of the fish were tossed back, and Bragg had more proof that his homemade baits work.

Buoyed by the early success of his lures, he is planning bigger and better things. He hopes to expand his business, which now sells lures primarily through his Facebook page, and hopes to start guiding and fishing tournaments.

In short, he has hope — something he didn’t have several months ago.

Serving in a war can be tough on a man, he’ll tell you. He witnessed horrors that he wouldn’t wish on anyone. He saw friends killed. He survived mortar fire 17 times (yes, he remembers the exact number), and he suffered the pain of losing three friends to suicide.

“Not one of them was over 25 years old,” he said.

Bragg served in the Army from October 2006 to July 2013 and was in a unit that did scouting. He was on the front line, and he and his unit won commendations for their service.

Still, Bragg was more than ready to transition back to civilian life. After a tough time with his personal life, Bragg is encouraged that things are finally turning around. And he owes much of that to his love of the outdoors.

When he isn’t hunting deer in the fall, he is out fishing the rest of the year. And now he has plenty of lures to cast to the crappies.

“When I go fishing, I have a tackle box and a hackle box,” he said. “I’ll tie jigs anywhere.”

He already has a loyal following. If business booms, he plans to hire some of his buddies, fellow Amy vets, to help him tie.

“I won’t ever get rich off this,” he said. “But that’s fine. If I just make enough to pay the bills and let me take some time to go fishing, that’s great.

“That would be a good life.”

This story was originally published April 25, 2015 at 2:31 PM with the headline "Tying lures and fishing help put veteran on the road back from war."