Carp Fishing In The UK

[poliphilo]

Do you know how many glossy magazines devoted to carp fishing are published in the UK?

The answer is at least six. I was in a queue at the post office this morning and I counted them.

They have titles like Carp Fishing Monthly and Total Carp and all have covers showing a grinning man holding an enormous fish. Perhaps it's the same fish. Perhaps they pass it around.

Name an interest or hobby- and it'll have a glassy magazine devoted to it. If its a popular thing- like genealogy or rock music or even tattoos- there'll be a whole raft of different magazines.

Who buys them all? How do magazines manage to flourish in an era when newspapers are closing? How many carp fishermen are there in Paddock Wood?

Comments

[matrixmann]

I'd say hobby magazines still are not like regular newspapers.
Circulating around a certain field, you don't find that much information about a subject online concentrated in one spot. The only exceptions to this are magazines dealing with computer topics (but that circumstance seems very logical).
Apart from that, getting to know something out of your subject otherwisely only works by joining forums or groups in social networks, but even then - people saying they're interested in a subject doesn't mean they can give you a lot of information about it.
So to say... Hobby magazines can still survive because their network around a subject is much smaller and the factual information doesn't circulate around that freely like, for example, politics where everyone can have a little knowledge and pump it up to a blubble, nothing needs to be true with that. You need deeper research for that and that's what no majority of people has the contacts for, the tangency with the subject and which the least of them has the time for to put it all in a readable collage.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There must be a demand for them, but it still amazes me that the market can sustain six very similar mags on the same subject.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I know absolutely nothing about carp fishing, but somehow I now have the urge to start my own carp fishing magazine... "Total Eclipse of the Carp".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Watch out carp, here comes sorenr; he shows no mercy.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Well, perhaps my magazine would be more dedicated to taking pictures of carps, rather than catching them. After all, I hear that lo-carp diets are all the rage these days. (Sorry about that really, REALLY bad pun!)

[raakone.livejournal.com]

Matrixmann said it all. You've got specialty magazines because, even with the web, finding what you want on some things can be hard. I've seen a magazine devoted to sheep farming. Magazines devoted to food. Also those on rail/train related subjects (and that has a bit of a divide, in the English speaking world, usually it will have, as its main focus, North America, or the UK (and to a lesser extent, Ireland and Europe), and on both sides of the ocean one can find those on both)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's just that there are so many of them. The Post Office in our village stocks hundreds.

[faunhaert.livejournal.com]

Carp are considered a
invasive species here.
"no one Likes to eat carp"
but they get Huge here.
and they jump in you boat and try to knock you out.
That would be a great way of talking people
into carp fishing "its popular in the UK !"
Do any of those magazines that teach how to make them edible?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Are they edible? I doubt it.

I think people catch them just for the sport of it- and then put them back in the water.

But what do I know? It's not as if I've read any of these magazines.

[faunhaert.livejournal.com]

its best if they end up as fertilizer..
think there's no limit.
they eat the local/indigenous fish its how they get so big.

yea i didn't think you read them
there wasn't a "carp gourmet" in the stack.

grin

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You cook it as gefilte fish. Yes, it's true that some people prefer other fish, but carp is one of the traditional basic fish for gefilte fish -- usually a mix of carp, whitefish, and pike.

Grind it up with eggs, onions, salt, pepper, optionally a little sugar, and matzo meal, form it into balls or rugby-ball shapes, and boil it in stock.

Serve with ground horseradish. I bet THAT will make the carp good.

[faunhaert.livejournal.com]

thank you.
they do look like they'd be firm like salmon,
I've had someone smoke cat fish and even make them edible.