Hi JamesCrk ,
I believe you can retrieve your dropped connections by deleting it's entry from Connection table , no need to create the forwarder VS again.
use this article to delete it : https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K53851362
If your connections are continous and not reach to idle timeout and there is a glitch in your network , sure this is may cause an impact for these connections and deleting them from connection table will solve it.
I faced an issue like this before similar to your scenario