Fish n Tips Magazine – couldn’t keep it up

This was meant to be a happy post about how thrilled we were about the launch of Fish n Tips – a brand new fishing magazine with a fresh, fun approach. Unfortunately I’ve just read the sad news on fntmag.co.uk that the magazine has not managed to secure enough advertising revenue to put the second issue to print.

I thumbed through Issue 1 and thought what a great idea it was to style an angling publication as a lads mag – and without pigeon-holing all us anglers, how the demographic was spot on.

For a first issue, the magazine has been put together in a really impressive and professional manner. When you dig a little deeper this makes sense as the company behind Fish n Tips, Blockhead Media Ltd have their roots in performance car magazines – a familiar format to Fish n Tips. Attractive young ladies and fast cars – of course. Attractive young ladies and pike lures – why not?!

In an effort to make myself look ever so slightly less shallow in my sadness of losing the ‘Bivvy Babes’ it needs to be highlighted how strong the editorial was too. I would recommend getting down to WH Smith pronto and securing yourself a copy before they’re all gone.  In the ‘All the gear, but no idea’ series FnT planned to borrow a concept from BBC’s Top Gear and task angling stars and professionals with trying to catch a good fish (percentage of record) using only a budget Argos starter kit and minus all the usual high-tech paraphanalia – or as they put it, ‘star with a reasonably priced rod.’

Another series I was looking forward to was ‘Urban Angler’, where roving angler ‘Bin Fishin’ seeks out some of the most neglected fishing in the UK – that in our towns and cities. While the content is light and humerous – like the rest of the magazine – I really thought this could be the launch pad to get a new breed of anglers into the sport, not to mention kids, with accessible angling for the huge population of concrete bound fishermen and women.

‘Apps n Babs’ was a simple but genius look at the growing range of fishing related apps we all search for on our smartphones, making recommedations of the best ones – something I’ve not seen done well to date.

I was also pleased to see that a number of the advertisers that were secured for the first issue had seen sense and invested in adverts inkeeping with style of the magazine, namely those from Hooked On Foods and Enterprise Tackle. I could have seen this catching on in just a few months – eye catching for sure.

We’ll be keeping an eye on www.fntmag.co.uk in the hope that someone will come in and save the day, giving advertisers long enough to realise what a great opportunity this is.

In the meantime, we salute the people behind Fish n Tips magazine for such a bold and well thought out execution of an enjoyable fishing magazine.