Return to fishing was the therapy I needed to beat depression

I am 32, and for the past 10 years or so I have suffered with severe depression and anxiety.

I would like to tell my story about how fishing helped me regain my mental strength and overcome a really difficult time.

my earliest fishing memory is of my dad taking me floatfishing on a local river and watching him freak out when I caught my first bootlace eel.

Ever since then I have always been in love with fishing, but over the past few years I put it on the back burner. It became more of a chore than a pleasure, and I put this down to my depression and anxiety, from not wanting to leave the house at all to worrying about every possible thing that could go wrong on the bank.

Eventually I decided to rediscover a lost love. I managed to get off to a little local commercial near my house.

I had a wonderful day and caught my first sturgeon on the pole. Looking back, I realised I’d not been depressed or anxious all day while I was there.

Then it hit me. I had been in a ‘being’ state of mind all day – not in an anxious state, worrying about what ‘might be’ or a depressed state, thinking about ‘what had been’. I’d just been in the ‘now’, concentrating on that red float, thinking: “Where’s my next fish coming from?” I didn’t have a care in the world.

Like its very own form of meditation I was able to switch off from all the chatter going on in my mind and just focus on the here and now. Rediscovering fishing and its medicinal properties has been one of the best choices I’ve made in life. So, for anyone out there who is suffering mentally and has been or is thinking about going fishing, please grab your rod and go. I promise you won’t regret it.

James Leech, email