Martyn White | Thursday, 22 August 2024
It's rained and blown a gale basically every day but one since I've been back in Scotland which along with the circumstances of me being home have prevented any fishing. Everyone keeps saying they've not really had a summer, which I'm starting to believe. Things are looking brighter over the weekend, and I might get out, but I'm not holding out much hope of getting clear water and nice fishing. I did buy a couple of paper magazines rather than online subs the other day which has kept my marginally satisfied but also annoyed me a bit.
Before I go any further, I do realise that the publishing industry is under a lot of pressure from the internet, but I think the magazines I got are good illustrations of different strategies of dealing with it, one good and one not so good. The two I got were Fly Fishing & Fly Tying and Trout & Salmon. FF&FT continues to be good, it was good right from the start and is, I think anyway, the best of the British magazines, and right up there with others around the world. The content is quality, with good photos and information on waters flies and in-depth "teaching" articles on things that someone, whether a beginner or more advanced angler, might actually need. Ally Gowans' article on approaching a big river for salmon which featured a lot on wading safety and gear was particularly good. And will actually make life easier and the fishing more enjoyable for people who do that kind of thing. There are also pages on things like the sewage crisis and the impact of invasive piscivorous birds, with thoughts and guidance on what we as anglers can/could do about it. Not everything is a hit, but you can't please all the people all the time, I've never been a fan of Charles Jardine's pages, but I know a lot of people who like them. Sure there are plenty of pages of ads, but that's unavoidable, especially when the mag is only a fiver.
T&S on the other hand I found pretty disappointing. It's more expensive at £7 but also has more ads, I think £7 isn't too expensive for a magazine and I probably wouldn't have considered the density of ads if the contrast with FF & FT hadn't been so noticeable. There is a lot of white space, and the articles are quite surfacey, albeit with nice photos. There is little in it that I would say is informative, rather it'swhat appear to be paid-for ad-articles by estates that own fishing hoping to fill available day rods on their beats for the back end or another article on fishing the bung or washing line on a small stocked fishery, given that fishing isn't inundated with newcomers it's hard to see why these come round so much. I thought when I looked at "the knowledge" section I might find something worthwhile, but it's tiny little bitesize nuggets of nothing for the most part.. Don't want wet feet when walking in long grass? Wear wellies. Amazing! The only good bit I thought was Rob Denson's look at WOIGO wets band his thoughts on breaking away from tradition to include it in non-wet fly flies, hardly ground-breaking but nicely written and it's something that I feel like the core of T&S readers probably will consider to be highly innovative.
All in all I feel like the publishers of T&S have tried to cut to protect fine margins whereas FF&FT have decided to put out quality and trust that readers will continue to pay for it. If one of them does work and we're to continue to have printed media, I hope FF&FT's approach is the one that will be successful and others follow suit. I'll continue to subscribe to the digitals while overseas, but I much prefer to sit with a copy and read it.