Joel Stewart grew up in Great Falls Montana where he was immersed in an outdoors culture. He learned to fish about the time he learned to walk, began to tie flies at age six, and was tying commercially at eight.

 

As a teenager, he worked summers in a tackle store and winters in a taxidermy studio. He spent one summer as a custom fly rod builder’s apprentice.

 

After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Navy in 1985, to earn money for college. At that time, it was join the service or become a trout bum. Though he took the high ground and remains on active duty, though he often wonders how the trout bum plan would have worked out.

 

His career in the Navy has allowed him to fish on six continents and catch dozens of species of fish, mostly on a fly rod.

 

He served in Iraq in 2005 and founded the Baghdad Angler’s Club and School of Fly Fishing there. He wrote a book, A Fly Rod in My Sea Bag, about his time in Iraq and the club he started up to support service men and women far from home.

 

In addition to the book, he has written numerous articles and spoken to clubs across the country on fly fishing.

 

In service to our country, he has spent 37 years in uniform, 21 of those years at sea, including four command tours, including his current assignment as commodore of Naval Beach Group ONE.