No more buying the Angling Times every week for me…It is just not relevant to my fishing anymore.
That may sound a little on the bitter side and be seen as evidence that I have thrown my teddies 
out of the pram because I haven’t won a cap and badge but it is not. I used to collect “captions” in the papers, every week I would send in whatever I had caught and if I hadn’t caught or some news item caught my eye I would send in a “Letter to the editor” in the hope of getting a picture or a few column inches in the press and in doing so I won 
pretty much every contest that the weeklies and monthlies have ever offered. It was a hobby.
But like most hobbies it began to fade, it began to fade in earnest when I started to write articles for the local and national press, I think that is when I realised that I could be the author of whatever I wanted to see in the press and did not have to rely on the opinions of an editor and now I have my own website, I have for all intents and purposes my own outlet where I have 100% control over what goes out…
So why get pissed off that a catch of fish did not win a contest?
I suppose it is the bitter realisation that I will never win the one contest that has evaded me, the “Drennan Weekly”, the stark truth of it is that even though I catch a lot of fish and my catch rates are far higher than many big name fishermen, I do not catch nationally important fish on a weekly, monthly or even yearly basis because I am a northern angler and the fishing in England has for the most part a line drawn through it that dissects north from south.
I also have a job and a family and I also understand what my penis is for other than pissing out of, therefore I am handicapped before I start.
Fishing is a hobby and not a job for me…and that s how I like it.
OK, so I will never make a living from fishing…that is probably a good thing, because business and pleasure should never be mixed anyways …so what to do now?
I don’t have to do anything…just carry on as I am and have fun because that is the name of the game, I don’t feel the need to jump through hoops any longer to try and get a prize that I am regionally discriminated against, the urge is now broken…nor do I feel the need to understand the intricacies of how to pot pellets into the margins for hungry carp of dubious genetic purity.
And so I realise that I have come to a watershed moment in fishing… the Angling Times is now irrelevant to me, I can go out, wherever I want and fish for whatever makes me happy, safe in the knowledge that if I consider a fish meritorious it will get published!!
And any pictures my friends catch can be published…In fact we the anglers with the advent of the internet and all that comes with it have all the power we ever need to create an angling press in whatever image we choose! We no longer need to bow to the fickleness of the old school printed press, nor concern ourselves with North/South divides!
Fuck it…we can print what we want and say what we want :O)
And I like that!
So here is to the future…A future that is full of opportunity!
I can write articles about tackle that I like and drop names of who I like, I can plug what bait I am using when I choose to and refrain from naming venues whenever it pleases me to do so, I can even make videos of me fishing the mighty Trent if it amuses me to do so…in this little corner of the internet I am a God!
Amen.
As a southern softie myself I do sympathise.
It’s just not possible to ‘compete’ with fish being caught from a “Hampshire stillwater” or “Dorset river”. But don’t forget that Cornwall, for example, isn’t exactly a hotbed of coarse fishing. I’d argue it has far fewer big fish than most northern counties. Don’t even have barbel etc.
I thought there should be a grading/weighting system. i.e. a 6lb chub is worth more points from a ‘difficult’ river than an ‘easy’/better stocked one etc.
Obviously it’s impossible to regulate and would be open to all sorts of abuse but just an idea for a bit of fun. It would also mean anglers would have to hones. So it’s doomed to fail.
I remember one glorious session I had on the trent when I sent in a 15lb barbel and a 9lb chub into the anglers mail. Only to be beaten by an avon 2lb 3oz Roach it beggered belief.
As a person who has written and had articles published since 1962 in the Angling Press both nationally and iinternationally, I can say that these days it is extremely difficult to make a living as a professional angler.
There was a time when it was possible to earn good money by getting fishing articles published. For instance I used to make on average more money writing for Sheffield Newspapers in the 60s than I earned as a junior engineering draughtsman. I very nearly gave up engineering to become a full time journalist.
But I’m glad I didn’t.
IIn the 50s, Richard Walker was offered up to £15 a week for an 800 to 1,000 word article. This was an enormous amount of money at that time, equal to
around £500 a week now.
But these days articles are written by staff reporters as advertorials, pushing some tackle or bait manufacturer.
Which is a great shame.