Youth world champion fly fishing team includes western Pennsylvania captain
The best youth fly fishing team in the world has a captain from western Pennsylvania.
Josh Miller of Gibsonia, Allegheny County, led Team USA that won the 20th FIPS-Mouche Cortland World Youth Fly Fishing Championship July 16-23 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Five anglers and one reserve ages 16 to 19 make up the team. The United States placed first with 266,900 points to second-place France's 205,340 points. The Slovak Republic was third with 160,020.
“It was a full team effort,” Miller, 35, said.
“The job of captain is always evolving and you’re always learning how to do it," he said. "There isn’t a set script. It’s just figuring out how to channelize the young anglers to be focused, to accomplish a specific goal, making sure they are on the bus on time and making sure everyone stays healthy."
Each angler fished five sessions, four on the Buna River and one on Lake Mostar. Participants earned points based on number of fish caught, and size of the fish came into play in the event of a tie.
“We came out swinging from session one," Miller said. "We were in first place day one through day five. We had the lead from the beginning and we held it the entire time, which is pretty hard to do. It was an awesome experience."
The anglers caught rainbow and brown trout, as well as soft mouth brown trout specific to the region. They also caught grayling, and one angler caught a marbled trout on the Buna River.
Pennsylvania anglers have been part of the team in past competitions, but this year they are all from other parts of the country. Team USA took three of the top five individual awards.
Drew Bone of New Mexico took first place, Kage Gossler from Oregon placed second, Lawson Braun of North Carolina came in fourth, Noah Shapiro of Colorado, came in 15th Max Logan of Colorado was 22nd.
Bone, 19, lives along the San Juan River in New Mexico and guides trout anglers through his business, Bone Fly Fishing.
"Becoming the world champion and winning the team gold medal has been a goal of mine for a long time, and it almost seemed almost unattainable, so making it a reality felt pretty surreal,” Bone said by telephone.
He competed in the world competition in Italy in 2022, and this was the last year he could compete in the youth division. “It was a good way to end, for sure,” he said.
Bone led the competition throughout the week. When it comes to fishing at home versus Bosnia, he said “there were some differences, but at the end of the day, trout are still trout. We still used a lot of the same techniques and flies. Even though we were on the other side of world, it still felt like home being in a trout river.”
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Miller, a fishing guide in western Pennsylvania for his company, Troutyeah.com, was on the Adult Fly Fishing Team USA from 2016-2020 and he’s been helping the youth team as an instructor, manager and coach for about 10 years. He transitioned from a competitive angler because he wanted to give back to the next generation. “Whenever you learn from people, it’s part of your duty to share it back. It’s important to not just hold on to what you learned for your own benefit, but you need to give it back to those young guys to give them the best chance to succeed."
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Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors,Twitter @whipkeyoutdoors and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Team USA youth fly fishermen win gold in Bosnia
