THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

JOURNALISM TARGET
Bucket List status – result
Angling journalism has long been a passion of mine. Not so much from the perspective of being in the
public eye, because I hate being on photographs, as anyone who has ever seen my trade mark miserable
face in the magazines will probably well appreciate.
I am however a creative person at heart who likes nothing better than to get up early in the morning,
park myself in front of the computer with endless cups of coffee trying to wake up while all around me
sleep, and put my thoughts, findings, and aspirations out there into the public domain in the hope that
others might benefit.
In the early days - the self taught no prior experience learning phase if you like when I can assure you
nothing comes easy, particularly to an educational stray as I was in my school years, to actually get
something published was an achievement, and a very occasional achievement at that.
Every article accepted rode on the back of several that weren't, which you had to take on the chin and
learn from, or could have learned from, if only rejection came with some measure of constructive
criticism to help avoid making the same mistakes again.
But, editors being busy people, and in particular the case of Peter Collins who back then headed up Sea
Angler, some simply wouldn't like you for whatever reason, despite never having met you, and as such
would tell you nothing, making guidance of any sort very difficult to come by.
So you would plod on, learning by a combination of default and reading what other people got
published, until eventually getting a handle of sorts on what it was that editors were looking for.
Probably my biggest step forward came not from the right words, but from my illustration. Few if any
of the all time greats I either met or fished with, such as Clive Gammon, even owned a camera, let alone
took pictures. In many cases their descriptive writing was so good you could conjure up suitable imagery
in your own head without the need for pictures.
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