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The History Of... Advanced Carp Fishing
Cast your mind back more than a decade to 1995. Carp fishing was very different then to how it is now. The ‘revolution’ had just begun, with more and more anglers switching from general coarse fishing to carp fishing. The carp industry was still in a ‘cottage’ state – with lots of innovators working from small warehouse units and even garden sheds in an attempt to make some money – and there weren’t as many big fish for people to catch as there are these days.
Now, of course, a 20lb carp isn’t considered huge anymore, and companies like Korda, Kryston, Nash and Fox are multimillion-pound organisations. It’s amazing how much things can change over the course of 10 or 11 years!
It was a similar situation when it came to carp fishing magazines. There were fewer specialist carp titles around in 1995, and those that were on the newsagents’ shelves (such as Carpworld and Big Carp) weren’t comparable, either in terms of sales figures or design, to angling titles in other sectors. The likes of Improve Your Coarse Fishing, Trout and Salmon and Sea Angler led the way by some considerable margin.
David Hall, chairman of DHP, saw a gap in the market and recognised that carp fishing was going to become huge in the UK. He reacted to this by deciding to launch a new carp magazine. The aim was simple – for it to become number one in the marketplace within a year or two of it first being published. So the concept for Advanced Carp Fishing (ACF) magazine was born. A launch editor, Bob Roberts, was found, and ACF hit the shelves for the first time as a quarterly title in the spring of 1995, for the princely sum of £2. Bob was provided with a simple brief – to create an instructional magazine for the angler who buys boilies, not the angler who makes them.
This philosophy was key to the magazine’s success. DHP and editor Bob wanted easy-to-follow tips and instructional articles, all aimed at the beginner and intermediate carp angler, to help him (or her) catch more fish. Such articles, it was thought, were not available in any other carp fishing magazine at the time.
Bob did a sterling job and within a year the magazine was a roaring success, so much so that it became bimonthly in 1996. Sales figures rose steadily from one issue to the next and ACF eventually became the UK’s biggest-selling carp magazine.
Bob spent six years at the helm of ACF before being replaced by Jim Foster in March 2001. Editing ACF didn’t prove too much of a problem for Jim, and sales figures kept on rising – even though he was editing Total Carp (which was launched in 1999) single-handedly at the same time.
Jim managed ACF for just over a year. His tenure at the helm was really only a stop-gap measure while DHP searched for a new, full-time editor – and that man was found in 2002, when ACF went monthly for the first time.
When Martin Ford took over, he decided he wanted to take it in a new direction. No longer was this going to be seen as an “advanced magazine for beginners,” which was a criticism often levelled at DHP by competitors jealous of its success (competitors who didn’t appreciate the fact that ACF was part of the ‘Advanced’ series of fishing magazines published by DHP). Martin’s philosophy was to make ACF live up to its title. He filled its pages full of top-end technical tips, tricks and instruction, written by the very best carp anglers in the UK who were fishing for the country’s biggest fish.
This was to prove a popular move with the readership, and in 2003 ACF released officially audited sales figures for the first time. Its biggest-selling issue almost hit the 20,000 mark under Martin’s leadership, a credit to his ability as a carp angler who understood the market he was writing for.
Martin moved onto pastures new in 2005 and the spring of that year saw Mark Holmes installed as editor. Mark edited the magazine until August 2008 – overseeing ACF’s second major redesign during that time. He prioritised the credibility of the magazine, emphasising that the ACF team were out there carp fishing alongside its readership.
That credibility clearly appealed to the readers because ACF is now the second-biggest carp magazine on the market, behind Total Carp, with an average monthly sale of more than 16,000 copies. This makes it the number-one big-carp magazine on the shelves, a position that current editor, Richard Stewart, hopes to cement.
Richard worked his way through the ranks on ACF, starting as editorial assistant in 2005 and becoming editor in 2008. Because of this, Richard sees the incredibly wide appeal of the magazine. “ACF is all things to all carpers. Whether you want inspirational big-fish tales, the latest circuit-water tactics or honest reviews of the latest tackle, you’ll find it here,” he says. In keeping with its heritage, today’s magazine is still packed with easy-to-follow technical information, presented in a way that appeals to a wide range of anglers. The launch of www.advancedcarpfishing.com, takes the ACF brand to a whole new audience.
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