Fishing Magazines - content

I know I have been going on about magazines a lot lately but bear with me on this for a minute...

I was out with the missus yesterday, taking my elderly mother shopping. While they were deciding which way to attack the supermarket and spend five minutes rummaging in handbags (why do they do that? they never take anything out), I decided to take a look at the magazines. Having given up on the weeklies, I picked up a monthly. It caught my eye because it said something about 'Make your own particle mix'. As you may know, I like making my own bait so I checked out the article to discover it was 'Mix' your own. I was just suggesting I bought several bags of branded particles and mix it together. Another article was talking about feeders showing boxes full of feeders and suggesting that you need to take dozens of them (mostly from the same manufacturer) with you to be prepared. The rig articles were not any better... I could go on.

Okay, I did buy a monthly, when I first started, and I did get some basics from it but I soon got to the stage where I could find nothing much to interest me.

I have only been fishing three years and I have already grown out of the magazines. I was getting bored with them over a year ago.

It is all very well moaning about the content, but on a positive note what do I really want to see a magazine? Well, for me it is practical hands on stuff like bait making and tackle repairs, neither of which will ever happen as it does not promote sales of bait and tackle. The venue information seemed to be good until I realised that it was mostly out of date, or in some cases, totally incorrect.

It seems to me that I am not going to find what I want in a paper publication anymore.

It is unlikely to change, but just for the fun of it, what would you like to see in a monthly magazine?

Ralph.

fishplate42 said:

I know I have been going on about magazines a lot lately but bear with me on this for a minute...

It is unlikely to change, but just for the fun of it, what would you like to see in a monthly magazine?

Ralph.

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You're not kidding

How about some passion and imagination, anglers doing a narrative story of adventure and adversity, capturing both the wildlife and surroundings as they play fish big and small on light lines against all odds recounting the moments it all went wrong and sometimes went right.

Or a feature on commercials with expander pellets which would sell more copies

You have all you need on this forum Ralph and if a bit of one to one tuition is offered by those who know better, then even better!

theartist said:

How about some passion and imagination, anglers doing a narrative story of adventure and adversity, capturing both the wildlife and surroundings as they play fish big and small on light lines against all odds recounting the moments it all went wrong and sometimes went right.

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Then you need to get your hands on as many back issues of "Waterlog" magazine as possible . . . . .

I'd like to read more articles by anglers getting up stupid o'clock to blank on featureless canals.

There is not allot new in angling and as most of us find out eventually its just recycling of old ideas. The point being that eventually as your experience grows technical type articles can become rather boring as for the most part you have just heard it all before.

For that reason I always liked the more anecdotal type of articles. Were an angler recounts an interesting session or a campaign, both the good and the bad. Often its here that you can pick up some really good tips. The rotary letter type articles that appeared in some magazines did this really well. ....Rob Malins Big Carp mag back in the day I think being one of the first to follow such a format.

Some I am sure would say it went back even further and "drop me a line" was the forerunner with was it Walker and Ingham exchanging letters. The point is that even if you dont hear something new, you can just enjoy the story.

A good example of what I am talking about that i would recommend to take a look at is a seris of articles that were written by Alan Tomkins called "Blackwater". It was about his exploits (and struggles!) on Colnmere in its early days. Ok its Carp orientated but its really really good.

In fact we have something very similar right here on FM...its called the how did you get on thread !

Philip said:

There is not allot new in angling and as most of us find out eventually its just recycling of old ideas. The point being that eventually as your experience grows technical type articles can become rather boring as for the most part you have just heard it all before.

For that reason I always liked the more anecdotal type of articles. Were an angler recounts an interesting session or a campaign, both the good and the bad. Often its here that you can pick up some really good tips. The rotary letter type articles that appeared in some magazines did this really well. ....Rob Malins Big Carp mag back in the day I think being one of the first to follow such a format.

Some I am sure would say it went back even further and "drop me a line" was the forerunner with was it Walker and Ingham exchanging letters. The point is that even if you dont hear something new, you can just enjoy the story.

A good example of what I am talking about that i would recommend to take a look at is a seris of articles that were written by Alan Tomkins called "Blackwater". It was about his exploits (and struggles!) on Colnmere in its early days. Ok its Carp orientated but its really really good.

In fact we have something very similar right here on FM...its called the how did you get on thread !

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There may have been a demand for anecdotal articles in the angling boom years up to the the 1970s. Nowadays they aren't as popular with readers. I think the Waterlog magazine prints anecdotal articles, although it's quite expensive at about £9 an issue.

Angling techniques don't change that much, so people get tired of reading more or less the same advice in the monthly and weekly papers.

I have just read the articles by Alan Tomkins entitled the Oblong Pool parts 1 and 2 and very well written and amusing they were too! Thanks Philip for recommending them. I will read the rest when I have finished the Game of Thrones- I wish I had read the books before seeing the TV series!

The articles by Alan Tomkins and the way they were written reminded me of the James Herriot books! They are funny and I will look up exactly where "Wince" came from in Asia!

I cannot imagine Messrs Ringer and Harrell being able to write articles of this standard!

As a follow up to the above post the character " Wince" ( really Vince but he could not enunciate his"v's") came from Yasoviristan. I cannot locate it in any search engine but have been linked to Waziristan in the tribal region of Pakistan and Afghanistan! No wonder his parents came here!

The articles recommended by Philip are a great read! I might even buy the book!

keora said:

I think the Waterlog magazine prints anecdotal articles, although it's quite expensive at about £9 an issue.

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As far as I know Waterlog has ceased publication. It wasn't bad for the first 50 issues but changed format after that and became repetitive.

When I started this thread, I asked what sort of content would you like to see, and there lies the problem. In years gone by, magazine sales were driven by new people coming into the hobby/interest/sport, or people just considering it. Although there were books and later videos available, the easiest and cheapest option was to buy a magazine - they were also a lot cheaper in those days, even taking inflation into account.

Today that gap is filled by the internet with free material available at the touch of a button or the tap of a screen. Anecdotal articles may be nice now and again, but getting enough quality material to fill a magazine month in month out (let alone weekly) would be extremely hard if not impossible. Even if it was possible and published, how many people would buy it? I am sure I would not want to read eight or ten of those sort of articles every month, month in, month out.

I hate to admit it but I cannot not see how a paper publication can sustain a readership for more than a few years - and that is pushing it.

I came to this hobby with absolutely no knowledge at all. I bought a few magazines, and I have to admit, they might just as well have been written in Swahili for what good they were to me. I eventually found a basic Matt Hayes video (that now seems to have been deleted) on YouTube, filmed at Furnace Mill Fishery, near Kidderminster, Worcestershire. That video showed how to float fish from rigging the rod to handling the fish. It got me fishing for the very fist time and catching fish.


Although I did continue to buy magazines for about eighteen months and weeklies for a further eighteen months I am now at the stage where I can't find anything to interest me an any of the magazines. It is not because I now know it all, far from it, but the magazines are just not giving me anything I don't already know in the areas I am interested in.

I continued to buy the weeklies for the current up-to-date news and fishery information. When I discovered even that content could not be relied upon, I quit. That was a few weeks ago.

I took my elderly mother shopping with my wife and last weekend and I stood there looking at the fishing magazines hoping to find something of interest, something to buy and read while I was waiting. I could not.

It is a real shame. The sort of articles I would like to see would never be published as they would not be in the interest of the advertisers as they are the ones who call the tune, when it comes to editorial content, these days.

I am not sure how many of you know this, but the cover price is what goes towards PAYING THE RETAILER to stock the publication. Publishers have to bid for shelf space in the big outlets such as WHS...

The world has gone bonkers.


Ralph.

Write them yourself Ralph! I do not say this in a perjorative sense but rather one of encouragement. I enjoy your blogs; they are witty and well written and I dare say you could write some very entertaining articles!

Have a read of the Alan Tomkins stories , as above, as I feel sure you will enjoy them and may find a kindred spirit! I may even have a go myself!

Ralph. Have you heard of Fallons Angler. Comes out 4 times a year by subscription.It has interesting articles written in good English covering a wide variety of subjects. No good to someone who is a one horse angler ie. carp, match or pike only.
I hope it succeeds. It must just rely on sales as the only adverts are a couple of pages similar to small ads on the last couple of pages.

mikench said:

Write them yourself Ralph! I do not say this in a perjorative sense but rather one of encouragement. I enjoy your blogs; they are witty and well written and I dare say you could write some very entertaining articles!

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Thanks for your kind words Mike, but there lies the problem. To write articles about fishing I would need the experience and in-depth knowledge, neither of which I have, when it comes to fishing.

In other subjects, that I do have decades of experience and expertise, I have written lots of books and hundreds (if not thousands) of magazine articles, editorials and reviews for publishers here, in Europe and America.

My blog is more about my journey into this world of fishing. It does cover my fishing sessions but it is much more than that. I talk about and publish details of bait recipes, experiments, which I follow up with reports on how they worked out. I detail repairs and talk about tools and tackle I have made, modified or used. This is all done with the caveat that this me doing it for me, not presuming to tell the experienced how to suck eggs.

I hope people find it interesting, and I am amazed how many people follow it but it was not written for any other reason that to be a personal diary and, in the case of the reviews, Like the ZT-Pro, just how I found the item to use and what I thought of it.

Now, in my early sixties, I just write for pleasure, If someone wants to pay me to do it, I am always open to offers, but as far as fishing goes I just love it - all of it.

Ralph.

The articles by Alan Tomkins, rather like James Herriot , contain very little about the technicalities of fishing or vetinary science! Rather they dwell on interesting folk, silly behaviour or just plain eccentricity wrapped around a serious subject.

A tale by me about the helicopter rig which I tied and caught a tench with only really comes alive if I fell in, caught the hook on my backside or worse and failed to catch. You cannot beat a good anecdote and are not fishermens tales legendary!

john step said:

Ralph. Have you heard of Fallons Angler. Comes out 4 times a year by subscription.It has interesting articles written in good English covering a wide variety of subjects. No good to someone who is a one horse angler ie. carp, match or pike only.
I hope it succeeds. It must just rely on sales as the only adverts are a couple of pages similar to small ads on the last couple of pages.

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I have herd it mentioned, in passing, but to may shame I had not followed it up until today. I have ordered a copy.

Ralph.

I have too and will give it a good read!

I have subscribed to magazines for a few years, angling times, anglers mail, now I just subscribe to readly got them all and most of the other shelf magazines