Cancer? Dr Trout will see you now

Nothing good may come from the disease, but PAUL CATMUR found a weekend's fly-fishing with fellow sufferers a therapy he's hooked on.

- PAUL CATMUR

When Stu Brown was dealing with brain cancer in 2003, he made an interesting scientific discovery. He noticed that despite the gruelling physical and mental demands of dealing with his illness, there was something that gave him peace.

Actual medical evidence to support his finding was patchy, and it certainly wasn't curative, but Brown was convinced that his therapy was worth trying on others. So he assembled a group of fellow cancer sufferers, and a group of his friends to help them, and they spent a weekend trying it out. That therapy was fly-fishing.

The weekend was a tremendous success, and as well as the relief it provided to the patients, it turned out that the Buddies - the helpers who assisted the would-be anglers - got almost as much out of it, too.

This was in the United States, and although Brown later died, his legacy has grown such that Reel Recovery, as these restorative fishing weekends came to be known, spread not only across America but also to Australia and New Zealand. The slogan "Be Well! Fish on!", scrawled by Brown in the dirt on his car window, was adopted on that first weekend and has been used ever since.

As I grapple with an incurable fishing bug as well as advanced prostate cancer, I felt as if this weekend was made for me. I applied as soon as I heard about it and found myself heading down to one of Reel Recovery's fishing weekends - this one held on the rivers and streams around Raetihi, near Ruapehu.

It was a long drive down from north of Auckland, and I really didn't know what to expect other than that it involved fishing and therefore couldn't go far wrong. When I first arrived, there was the normal awkwardness of walking into a setting where everybody except me seemed to know each other.