February 2008 – Casting
for Recovery
The first time I heard of Casting for Recovery, a fly-fishing-based
support programme for women who have been treated for breast
cancer, I struggled to make the link. Why fishing?
That was before I interviewed Sue Hunter, captain of the
England Ladies fly fishing team in 2007. She came to the
sport after her second diagnosis of breast cancer eight
years ago.
“I needed to unwind and a friend suggested that I
might find fly fishing a good way of relaxing. Before I
started joining a few clubs I had never realised how popular
it was.
“It was good exercise. It can be difficult to get
moving properly after invasive surgery on your breast but
I found that I could go fishing very soon afterwards. The
arm action is the sort of gentle exercise you need and it’s
far less of a chore than doing some of the formal exercises
you are given in the clinic.”
But it wasn’t just the exercise. Fishing, she says,
provided something positive, purposeful and therapeutic
during a traumatic period in her life. At the same time
it opened a window on what is still regarded by many as
a male sport.
I know what she means in this respect. Fishing remains
very much a male preserve, something I find puzzling given
the success that women anglers have enjoyed historically.
After all, the British rod-caught salmon record of 64lbs
is held by a woman, Georgina Ballantine, fishing the river
Tay in 1922. Another giant salmon of 61 lbs was caught by
Clementine Morison, fly fishing on Scotland’s River
Deveron just two years later. In spite of these outstanding
achievements women remain a minority in angling.
But fly fishing, in particular, seems to be attracting
increasing numbers of women and Casting for Recovery, a
programme that began 12 years ago in the US, appears to
be tapping in to some hitherto unrecognised need.
I think it probably has something to do with the role of
fishing as “the big excuse.” Why else, without
the excuse of fishing, would you find yourself standing
up to your waist in a cold Scottish river for days on end?
Yet it sometimes needs that kind of intimacy with nature
to become absorbed in your surroundings.
In addition to the solitude there’s the companionship
of fellow anglers. What better therapy can there be for
dealing with life’s tougher experiences? Sue Hunter
agrees. “Fishing became my escape. But it wasn’t
until I read a small snippet in Fly Fishing and Fly Tying
magazine that I discovered Casting for Recovery and knew
straight away that they were on to something.”
She emailed the US-based not-for-profit organisation, and
now, four years later, she is heading the UK and Ireland
programme that she established and which last September
held its first event – a two-and-a half day fishing
retreat, based in West Sussex.
This year three more have been organised in England and
Wales and a fourth is planned in Ireland. The first of these,
now fully subscribed, is to be held in March at the Arundell
Arms, the Devon-based fishing hotel owned by Anne Voss-Bark
who has donated the accommodation, food and fishing.
Most of the UK programmes’ expenses are being underwritten
by the Countryside Alliance. Orvis, the fishing tackle business,
contributes rods and other equipment.
The women who go are taught by female instructors and the
whole weekend is designed to put people at ease, with counselling
sessions held in the evenings.
Casting for recovery has proved so successful in the US
that 37 retreats are planned there this year. Since its
inception the organisation has introduced more than 3,000
women to fly fishing.
“My only regret about fishing is that I didn’t
take it up 30 years earlier.” Says 53-year-old Ms
Hunter. “I remember once walking alongside a stream
in Glen Nevis. Today I would be hanging over the bridge,
peering in to the water through my Polaroids.
“It’s hard to describe the fascination. It’s
not as if fish do much when you see them in the water. I
think it has something to do with their life cycle. They
have such a tough life right from the beginning when they’re
abandoned by their parents. Everybody and everything out
there wants to get them, whether it’s seals, cormorants
or anglers. I have tremendous admiration for every fish
I catch.”
Today she does most of her fishing at Bewl reservoir in
Kent, often with her partner David Kidby, another keen fly
fisher who she met through the sport. She ties her own flies
too. The mixed attraction of fly tying between the sexes
is another subject entirely. Why it appeals so much to men
who would run a mile from a knitting circle is one of life’s
great mysteries.
The linking of fishing to therapy, on the other hand, seems
so natural that it’s a wonder it hasn’t been
done earlier. Any woman who has or has had breast cancer
is welcome to apply to join the retreat programme. The costs
of the retreats are covered by the organisation and its
supporters.
www.castingforrecovery.org.uk/
(US site: www.castingforrecovery.org).
There is also a Canadian programme and inquiries have been
made about starting one in New Zealand.
See also: Mayfly
time and a fishing museum