One sunny day in 2017, Luke Cureton was on a lake in Montana.
He’d been medically retired from the Army. A roadside bomb injured him during his second tour in Iraq, he said. He’d been struggling with PTSD, which is part of the reason he was in Montana fly fishing. He cast an imitation fly and tried to make it look appetizing. Then he got a bite.
“To catch that fish was almost like to hold on to my struggle,” he said. “They introduced me to the concept out here of ‘catch and release.’ And once I caught that fish — once I caught that struggle and released it — it was a very emotional moment for me. From that point on, I was hooked on fly fishing.”