Jess Westbrook is Meant to Fly

Before founding The Mayfly Project (TMP), Jess Westbrook experienced the healing power of fly-fishing firsthand. A week after the birth of his first child, Westbrook started suffering from panic attacks. The anxiety behind his attacks became a debilitating fixture in his life for the next six months, making it hard for him to eat, sleep or go to work.

But then a fishing mentor of his began inviting him on trips, which helped unknot Westbrook’s tension.

“I would notice when I would go out with Chris everything would disappear. I forgot about all of my stress and anxiety for those eight or 10 hours while we were on the water,” he says.

Westbrook has enjoyed fishing his whole life and began casting around for ways to give back through his passion. Around the time he started noticing the positive effects of fly-fishing for his own anxiety, inspiration struck. During a presentation given by a foster organization at the church he and his wife attend, his dream to help others through fly-fishing began to take shape.

“I looked at Laura and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to take foster kids fishing,’” Westbrook says of his wife, who was immediately supportive.

“I just said yes! It started with him and me taking a couple of kids in our community. It’s awesome to look back at how it started so small,” she adds.

And it did start small. For six months it was just the couple taking kids in foster care fishing. But in 2015, Westbrook was ready to take another small step. He set up TMP as a 501(c)(3), donating any proceeds from fishing trips he guided back to the nonprofit. And in early 2016, he made the fateful decision to have a logo created for the fledgling nonprofit. The branding, a colorful, yet delicate rendering of a mayfly by angling artist Andrea Larko, hit social media in April of that year. Much like a fly on a perfectly placed cast, the logo caught just the right attention: the eye of Kaitlin Barnhart.

Barnhart is a mental health professional and social worker in Idaho who works with youth in foster care. She began utilizing fly-fishing as a therapeutic method early in her career and specifically taking youth she worked with about 18 years ago. After seeing TMP’s logo online, she tracked down the Westbrooks.

“I had never found anyone else that believed so strongly in what fly-fishing could do for children in foster care, so I was thrilled to meet Jess and Laura,” Barnhart says.

Barnhart’s connection with the Westbrooks was fortuitous for the future of TMP, and Jess’ dream to help others through fly-fishing started to expand yet again, this time beyond his home state.

“After several conversations on the phone, we started to realize that with my background in mental health and program development, Jess’ background in finance and management and Laura’s career as a lawyer, we could turn The Mayfly Project into a national program and change the lives of even more youth in foster care,” Barnhart says. And that’s what they did, with Barnhart coming on as co-founder and national program director for TMP.

Today, the national program is made up of more than 60 projects across the country, including one in the UK. Arkansas is currently home to four projects, plus the planned addition of a Paragould project launching later this year. There are projects in Little Rock, Benton, Fayetteville and Texarkana, and each project is connected with a local foster organization. The Little Rock project partners with Methodist Family Health, and in Benton, TMP partners with Second Chance Youth Ranch. TMP aims to grow steadily but sustainably, capping the new projects it establishes at five per year.

Each local project is run by a lead mentor who advises the rest of the mentor team and orchestrates the logistics for each session.

“Our mentors and lead mentors are amazing. They make our job pretty easy. They’re the ones actually out there, boots on the ground, making it happen in those other states,” says Westbrook, who heads up the Benton branch.

But no matter the state, the project participants fish as a group, and each kid is paired with a mentor so they get one-on-one guidance and connection. The flow of the program is simple, but intentional: Project mentors commit to five sessions with the kids within a six month window.

“The kids, who have often been dealing with a lot of trauma and adults that come in and out of their lives, know on the front end that we’re only there for five sessions,” Westbrook says. “It’s a very defined start and stop, and that’s mainly to protect our kids and connect their emotions.”

The last session is always a special outing. For Westbrook and his group, they take the kids to Dry Run Creek in north Arkansas. After their final cast with TMP, all the kids are outfitted with everything they need to continue fly-fishing.

Together, Westbrook and Barnhart developed a curriculum that serves as the foundation for each of the five sessions. The curriculum quality is something the team is especially proud of. It’s even been a resource that outdoor brands have purchased to train their staff on the ins and outs of fly-fishing. The lessons start by sharing the characteristics of an angler. That’s where Westbrook and Barnhart draw clear lines toward even more benefits of the sport for their mentees.

Beyond the calming effects, TMP also highlights the patience, self-confidence, grit and wisdom anglers develop through their time fishing. Instead of untying a knot for the 20th time, kids are growing patience and learning to take a deep breath instead of reacting in anger. Kids are encouraged to trust themselves and their skills as they work to trick a fish. They learn that the best anglers know when to ask for help. And they learn grit isn’t based on test scores, but found after that 100th cast where perseverance meets passion on the river.

To help make this all concrete and fun for the kids, mentees also work to earn badges throughout the sessions. By the end of the program, they can proudly display badges they earned for casting, tying and just being an awesome kid. The curriculum also shares tips on where fish like to hang out, illustrated step-by-step guides to ties and casts and a glossary of all the terms any new angler should know.

Another major component of the program is sharing an appreciation for the environment and encouraging mindful conservation. When it comes to conservation, TMP focuses on the three C’s. The first is catch and release. As the term suggests, the kids are taught the proper way to release any fish they’ve caught unharmed. Beyond being humane to the fish, the act of letting the fish go can be powerful for the mentees, a symbol of the flow and connectedness of life.

The second C is all about mitigating contamination of water in their local ecosystem. The young anglers are taught to thoroughly clean, drain and dry their gear before fishing in a new body of water to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species like algae, parasites or non-native mollusks and crustaceans. According to the curriculum, these species are one of the greatest threats to American trout and salmon.

And for the final C, the kids focus on maintaining clean rivers. This means leaving their fishing spots cleaner than they found them. The participants can even earn a badge for picking up trash during an outing.

TMP isn’t the only fly-fishing-centric nonprofit, and most are likewise focused on the healing nature of the sport. Project Healing Waters, headquartered in Maryland, builds community for active military and veterans through fly-fishing, while Montana-based Casting for Recovery organizes fishing retreats for breast cancer patients and survivors. Yet TMP is the only organization specifically geared toward outfitting and mentoring youth in foster care.

According to Barnhart, the very nature of fly fish casting — rhythmic, meditative — makes it an ideal therapeutic outdoor recreation for people with anxiety, ADHD or PTSD. The surrounding environment also allows the participant to find mental rest by focusing on the water, the bugs and their fly drifting atop the water.

“Foster care alone can be traumatic for kids while also limiting those kids’ chances to participate in extracurricular activities. Fly-fishing is the perfect sport for youth in foster care because it provides mental rest, physically and psychologically, and is something that can be done anywhere in the world where you can find water,” Barnhart says.

And that universality is why outfitting the kids is a crucial part of the program.

“We’re there to connect them with nature and hope they will use that as an outlet,” Westbrook says, “so we really want to connect our kids to their local ecosystems, to ponds they can ride their bike or walk to. And we hear stories all the time from caregivers or foster parents of kids that keep fishing.”

A decade later and Westbrook’s purpose hasn’t shifted. He’s still just as dedicated to sharing the healing power of nature and fly-fishing today as he was on those first outings he and Laura took in the early days of TMP.

“We get to do a lot of cool things. This last fall, we were inducted into the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation’s Outdoor Hall of Fame,” Westbrook says. “But 100% I would rather be mentoring. There’s no question in my mind. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

It’s also no mystery to him why TMP works nationally and continues to grow steadily.

“Fly fishers are generally super passionate people, and foster kids are the most vulnerable population in the United States, so connecting a super passionate group with our most vulnerable population in the U.S.? It just works.”

But of course, it’s about much more than correlating numbers on a chart.

“As we like to say,” Laura says, “it’s all about fly-fishing, but it has nothing to do with fly-fishing.”

Learn more at themayflyproject.com.