The Secret Angler

For a group who are supposed to enjoy communing with nature and merging into the environment, anglers show a lot of aggression towards wildlife. I’ve already written about cormorants and how fishermen want to reach for the 12-bore whenever they see these dark satanic birds over their favourite fishery. But otters are equally despised, especially now that their numbers are on the rise.

As usual, anglers typically have little clue about wildlife in the country. Just as they’re ignorant of the cormorants lifecycle and history, the most they know about otters is that they have whiskers — oh, and live on a diet of fish. One common myth is that there is a group of nefarious illegal otter releasers going about the country and tipping furry fiends into any carp lake they can find. Do they suppose there is somewhere a great otter farm run by fish-hating breeders?

Social media allows the dark thoughts of such anglers to see the light of day. On Fakebook, the Chris Yates Fan Club, otherwise known as the Passion for Angling Group, has had its carpy waters ruffled by a discussion on the monster that rustled a member’s koi carp from his garden pond. Chief suspect according to other members is Tarka, on holiday from a bright water somewhere. An assortment of uninformed views follow which assert that otters need culling, controlling, trapping, and so on, all of which are illegal as the otter is a protected species and may not be interfered with in any way. Only one person in the group seems to appreciate that otters are an indigenous species that is reoccupying its rightful place in the environment.

It only takes a short bit of research to understand this. Otter populations were wiped out in most of the UK due to the widespread use of organic pesticides, highly toxic chemicals that were harmful to many other animals too. Limited introductions did take place in the 80s and 90s, mostly in East Anglian rivers, a total of 117 to its rivers. The last release was over 20 years ago. Not the ‘hundreds and hundreds’ wildly guessed at by one of the Facebookers. Since then otters have spread naturally; no longer hunted or poisoned they are thriving and eating fish, amongst other things, including signal crayfish.

Not surprisingly this has, in certain situations, brought them into conflict with angling. Yet rivers with otters — which includes all of those I fish — have good stocks and plenty to catch. If there were no fish there would be no otters. Artificial carp ponds full of heavyweight lumbering fish are more vulnerable because they offer an easy bellybuster meal. The effective solution here is to fence, which sensible owners do. All the posturing by anglers who claim there are too many otters, that they are constantly being released, that they are vampires with whiskers and rampant killers, sounds ludicrous; such people should inform themselves better. You can even look a fool on Facebook.

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Publishing a fishing magazine is no path to riches. Anglers, though numerous, are not great readers, and what they do read is likely to be short and online — think Facebook and forums, where there is the added bonus of being able to, er, get things off your chest. The biggest printed circulation is a little over 20,000 copies, and that only for a couple of magazines, namely Trout & Salmon and Improve Your Coarse Fishing, both instructional.

The literary magazine is not quite dead. Despite short-lived examples from the past like Creel, in recent years two new additions to this small market have appeared. The latest is devoted to fly fishing, Fly Culture, now two years old. Six years ago Fallon’s Angler appeared, an all-round magazine that covers all the branches of angling. Unfortunately the inception of Fallon’s coincided with (or possibly brought about) the demise of Waterlog, a publication that started in the Nineties and ran for 100 issues.

Clearly running a fishing magazine is a difficult commercial proposition. This got me to wondering what the costs of producing one might be. The big cost is printing and posting (both of the above magazines are subscription with perhaps a few sold in one or two fishing shops). I looked at a few online printers and my local high street shop to get an idea of cost. Fly Culture is A4 size and has about 100 pages, many in colour; a run of 1000 copies would cost £2500 to £3000. Fallon’s Angler is smaller (a bit bigger than A5) with a bit less colour, which comes in at £2000 or less per 1000. Royal Mail will deliver a magazine like FC for about £1.40 a copy, Fallon’s for £1.10.

Payment to contributors is the other main outgoing. I hear that Fly Culture pays writers up to £50 per article. There are about 15 articles per issue, hence a cost of £750. There may be further payments for photographs, design, etc.; I have no information on these. Fallon’s Angler is more generous towards its contributors and may pay over £100 for an article. Let’s assume £1500 for content. This adds up to a basic cost to produce Fallon’s Angler and Fly Culture of £4600 and £5150 respectively, assuming the higher estimates for printing.

Fly Culture retails at £9, Fallon’s Angler for £8. Assuming that 1000 copies are sold — which I’ve heard Fly Culture manages, or better — that is a total income of £9000. I don’t think Fallon’s achieves an income £8000 but I don’t know its circulation. So we can estimate that the profit for FC is of the order of £4000 per issue, Fallon’s somewhat less. If any subeditors are paid, these figures might be lower. Given the fate of earlier magazines, a loss is obviously possible.

What about the quality? Fallon’s Angler is generally good, some of it very good, although some old fishing clichés do find their way into its pages. Fly Culture is better than I expected given that so many guides write for it. Fishing overseas is a common subject, which sits a little uncomfortably with the magazine’s environmental credentials. The American style of photography is popular with close-ups of fishes’ heads. Both magazines deserve to thrive but I wonder whether they will. Fly Culture is aimed at a more reliable market, which puts it in a better position: fly anglers generally read more and spend more. I have some anxiety over Fallon’s Angler. The latest issue has been long delayed and some earlier ones were overdue. Is this an indication of problems? I’m hearing that the magazine is now harder to contact, emails go unanswered, and payments to contributors are sometimes late. I hope this is not a bad sign. Even with the much lauded Chris Yates in its pages, many potential readers don’t seem to know about the magazine, or if they do prefer to read old CY articles from images on Fakebook. Along with so much else, fishing culture is dumbing down and angling magazines suffer for it. Let us hope these two flourish regardless.

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