Atlanta native and former University of Alabama inside linebacker Jennings Hester always struggled with his mental health.
“I looked like this big macho guy, and I was playing at one of the best programs in the country, but my depression was spiraling,” Hester said.
When a series of injuries forced him to quit the game, he lost his sense of community and purpose.
“Like a lot of men, I didn’t talk about the mental health side of things, and I valued myself on statistics, like how many tackles I had or how much I lifted, and once that was stripped away, I didn’t really know who I was anymore,” he explained.
After encouragement from his family, Hester finally sought treatment for his mental health. He started taking medication and working with a therapist. In addition to these traditional methods, he also discovered that fly fishing helped calm his mind and give him that sense of community he had when playing football.
This experience eventually led Hester to create a similar community for others.
In 2019, Hester founded Fishing the Good Fight, a nonprofit dedicated to providing mental health support for men. The organization recently launched a Georgia chapter offering fly fishing retreats, in-person group therapy sessions, and other support programs.
Fishing for mental health
Hester knows first-hand how reluctant men are to talk about or seek help for mental health issues. He sees fly fishing — a sport that requires intense focus in a calm, outdoor setting — as an accessible entry point for men to discuss serious topics like anxiety, depression, and addiction.
“We attract the guys that wouldn’t get help, the ones that might not want to sit in an office and meet one-on-one with a therapist taking notes the whole time,” Hester said.
Fishing the Good Fight’s pay-what-you-can weekend retreats combine group therapy sessions with fly fishing and outdoor activities.
“A lot of these men are carrying 30 years of trauma that’s been holding them down that they’ve never talked about, and they often leave a retreat or our events and realize they have work they need to do,” Hester said.
Tate Cooksey is one of those men.
“Fly fishing saved my life,” Cooksey said.
He turned to the sport after being hospitalized for a mental health crisis ten years ago after a friend mentioned how the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit organization for wounded and injured veterans, used fly fishing for healing and therapy.
“I really wanted to go to a treatment facility that had fly fishing and was mental-health oriented, but nothing existed back then,” Cooksey said.
He attended his first Fishing the Good Fight retreat in July 2025 in Colorado.
“It’s so much more than just the fishing, it’s been the community,” Cooksey said.
Cooksey joined the organization as the Atlanta chapter coordinator this year and now leads Georgia-based retreats and other community activities.
Like Hester, he believes the outdoor, group setting makes me feel more comfortable discussing their mental health.
“A lot of men find fly fishing appealing, and when you sprinkle mental health into it, people start to open up and get healing from it,” Cooksey said.
Year-round community and support
Fishing the Good Fight provides year-round support and community for men across the country.
In Georgia, both the Atlanta and Rome chapters host men’s support groups led by a licensed therapist. The organization also hosts free fly tying workshops and other community events, like day fishing at one of Cooksey’s favorite spots, Dry Creek near Rome.
Fishing the Good Fight currently has chapters in Georgia and Colorado. But men from over 25 states have attended the organization’s retreats and virtual group therapy sessions.
Hester is planning to add more regional chapters in the coming years to make the programs more accessible.
“Loneliness is such a big problem with men as we get older, and most guys have less than two friends,” Hester said.
Right now, many participants in Georgia often drive an hour or two for the organization’s fishing day trips and retreats — and the sense of community and accomplishment.
“Fly fishing requires complete mindfulness and presence and you have to stay focused, so when you’re able to catch a fish with something that you’ve tied, it’s a pretty incredible feeling, like you’ve come full-circle with nature,” Hester said.
“And they’re all there to be better fathers, partners, and friends, and all of a sudden they’ve got this new community that they know they can reach out to if they’re not doing well,” he continued.
With Fishing the Good Fight, Hester hopes to give other men the community and support he found through fly fishing.
