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Angling Times vs Angler's Mail


tiddlertamer

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We are very lucky in the UK to have two weekly angling publications - the Angling Times and the Angler's Mail.

 

I like both. The classic newspaper look and feel of the Times and the more magazine like look of the Angling Mail. I buy both and will probably get a subscription to one. But which one?

 

Which do you prefer and why? Which one has the best writers? Perhaps one has a better design? What do people on this forum think about these publications?

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days without taking a fish. (Hemingway - The old man and the sea)

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I can no longer bear either! Great shame as I thought they were both great publications for many years. In all fairness though I suppose that they have just moved with the times like angling its self.Just my personal veiw I suppose.

 

Try both and make your own mind up.

And thats my "non indicative opinion"!

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I can no longer bear either! Great shame as I thought they were both great publications for many years. In all fairness though I suppose that they have just moved with the times like angling its self.Just my personal veiw I suppose.

 

Try both and make your own mind up.

 

I've got to agree with Budgie. I used to buy them both years ago, but now can't stand them.

Maybe it's an age thing, although I'm a bit older than Budgie. :rolleyes:

At Christmas, I found the Angling Times Special in with my new computer chair, as a surprise. I've not read the thing yet!

 

John.

Angling is more than just catching fish, if it wasn't it would just be called 'catching'......... John

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A m8 of mine gets them nearly every week and gives them to me to read. To be honest I read very little, only what catches my eye. I just flick through lookin at the pick's mostly I just can't be arsed reading through it all. If my m8 didn't pass it on to me I wouldn't buy it I'd rather spend the money on bait or Deisel to get to a venue !

I think if I had to have one I'd get the Angling Times.

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They've both got their good and bad points, but on the whole I'd say Angling Times has the edge. I get AT bought for me each week, but if I had to spend my own money I'd get 'Improve Your Coarse Fishing' instead.

John S

Quanti Canicula Ille In Fenestra

 

Species caught in 2017 Common Ash, Hawthorn, Hazel, Scots Pine, White Willow.

Species caught in 2016: Alder, Blackthorn, Common Ash, Crab Apple, Left Earlobe, Pedunculate Oak, Rock Whitebeam, Scots Pine, Smooth-leaved Elm, Swan, Wayfaring tree.

Species caught in 2015: Ash, Bird Cherry, Black-Headed Gull, Common Hazel, Common Whitebeam, Elder, Field Maple, Gorse, Puma, Sessile Oak, White Willow.

Species caught in 2014: Big Angry Man's Ear, Blackthorn, Common Ash, Common Whitebeam, Downy Birch, European Beech, European Holly, Hawthorn, Hazel, Scots Pine, Wych Elm.
Species caught in 2013: Beech, Elder, Hawthorn, Oak, Right Earlobe, Scots Pine.

Species caught in 2012: Ash, Aspen, Beech, Big Nasty Stinging Nettle, Birch, Copper Beech, Grey Willow, Holly, Hazel, Oak, Wasp Nest (that was a really bad day), White Poplar.
Species caught in 2011: Blackthorn, Crab Apple, Elder, Fir, Hawthorn, Horse Chestnut, Oak, Passing Dog, Rowan, Sycamore, Willow.
Species caught in 2010: Ash, Beech, Birch, Elder, Elm, Gorse, Mullberry, Oak, Poplar, Rowan, Sloe, Willow, Yew.

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I can no longer bear either! Great shame as I thought they were both great publications for many years. In all fairness though I suppose that they have just moved with the times like angling its self.Just my personal veiw I suppose.

 

Try both and make your own mind up.

 

100% agree Budgie. Get all the info I need from sites like these (thanks Elton). If I want I good angling read I have to wait for Waterlog to land on my doormat every 3 months.... :rolleyes:

 

 

C.

"Study to be quiet." ><((º> My Blog

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They've both got their good and bad points, but on the whole I'd say Angling Times has the edge. I get AT bought for me each week, but if I had to spend my own money I'd get 'Improve Your Coarse Fishing' instead.

 

I have a subscription to IYCF and bought AT irregularly last year but got fed up of them reusing ostensibly the same article in both places.

Both I think tend to focus on rigs and baits at the expense of 'watercraft' type information.

Tony

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Thank God!

 

I thought I was pretty much alone in condemning both rags.

 

It was a few years ago, but one of them gave its 'Letter of the Week' prize to a guy who'd been caught fair and square fishing without a licence. That rather jaundiced my point of view - mainly because the editor tried to justify the decision. Frankly, I rarely read them and haven't bought them for a while, simply because they're both akin to reading week old copies of the Sport, with few of the redeeming features! ;)

 

As for the other one, I've seen better quality journalism from school kids in their in-house produced magazines. My regular angling mate pointed out the last two week's Anglers' Mail They've used the same photograph and text twice in consecutive weeks...no wonder they advertise it as being cheaper.... probably saving on copy costs.

 

 

I used to subscribe to IYCF, but since Kev Green took over the editorship, that, too, seems to have become more 'red top' in style - and the lesser a magazine for it, IMHO. The same two knot diagrams month after month.

 

 

It raises a broader issue:

 

 

The truth is that a good angler is just that, in the main. It doesn't mean they write well. A good example of this is Terry Hearn. Now, many people undoubtedly read his two books and probably enjoyed them, which is what it should be about: Educate and entertain, pure and simple.

 

Some folk will no doubt get off on the tales of idiocy of getting drunk by the lake, but what's that got to do with big fish, apart from the possibility of rendering yourself as bait for them?

 

I sent Elton a scathing review of Terry Hearn's first book. The fact that over a third of it waswritten by his mates - in fact, the best bits were written by his mates! The first book ends with TH saying that 'that's all he's got time for....' Hmmmm, a third of the book is other people's writing which suggests that there was a hell of a lot of padding, to the detriment of any real education for the reader. It doesn't detract in any way of TH as an angler, who is world class in more areas of angling than simply carp fishing.

 

I think he was misguided to have tried to write the books himself. A fair warning was that his second book was touted in the press on the basis of the number of pages and the weight of the book....the quality of the writing was never mentioned, which was just as well as it rather makes my case. If it was like the first volume, it was vacuous crap.

This is a signature, there are many signatures like it but this one is mine

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Thank God!

 

I thought I was pretty much alone in condemning both rags.

 

Nope. I actually told the editor of one of the magazines mentioned here recently that if any thread was started mentioning their magazine, I could pretty much name, in advance, who would slate them.

 

Just need Peter Waller to chip in now, and I'll have been 100% correct :D

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