Anyone else miss the way fishing magazines used to be?

[Swamp Girl]

My bedroom is decorated with old fishing magazines. I love the art of the old mags and hate the busy-ness of fishing magazines today, which are littered with breathless lies, like "37 Surefire Way to Catch Bass!"

 

I also love the articles inside the old magazines, which weren't a whit about promoting tackle and were largely about how it felt to be on the water, dancing with fish, blessedly alone or equally blessedly with friends and family. There is still one vestige of the old magazines and that is Gray's Sporting Journal, whose writers plumb what it's like to work with a Springer or Pointer, knowing it's your last, bittersweet time because knees and eyes don't last forever, or how it feels to loft fairy flies to rising bass beside your son or brother.

 

Today's magazines are all P.T. Barnum and no T.S. Eliot. As fishers, we are attuned to language, as we're attuned to water and woods. I heard this when I went north with 19 musky fishers for a week. One was a retired fighter pilot. A couple rode Harleys. One was a ex-football player. Another a bouncer and yet another a race car driver. They were manly men, but all used language in surprising ways: They were sometimes raw, often funny, but nearly always they expressed with concision and precision. Each strove to capture and convey what they'd seen and felt on the water because those moments mattered and will matter even more when we're too arthritic to cast and catch. Those callused men wanted our trip to last, so they went into the burrows where words bunker and wrestled them out. 

 

I see that here at bassresource.com too, a love of language that is necessary to say what we saw and felt this fishing day. 

 

C'mon, Field and Stream, fishers are poets, not marks for carnival barkers!

[Skunkmaster-k]

Dang you write perty!

[Deleted account]

Other than at the dentist's waiting room, I haven't looked at a magazine since the last century, so no...

[Dwight Hottle]

Excellent post. For what it's worth In-Fisherman still delivers some of what your looking for especially with regular contributions from Reflections & North with Doc. Unfortunately with all periodicals there are more advertisements & fewer worthwhile articles & less overall content. As I kid I always anxiously awaited my Sports Afield & Outdoor life issues. I also enjoyed Esox magazine, Musky Hunter, In-Fisherman & Fishing Facts. I only read Field & Stream occasionally. 

[Mobasser]

F&S used to have great writers. Ed Zern, Ted Trueblood and the last one John Merwin. People really don't write very well anymore. Now days, they send text on cell phones.

[MN Fisher]

6 minutes ago, Dwight Hottle said:

Excellent post. For what it's worth In-Fisherman still delivers some of what your looking for especially with regular contributions from Reflections & North with Doc.

In-Fisherman is the only one I still subscribe to...also read it on my tablet with the online availability.

 

I dropped BASS and Bass Angler as I felt the content wasn't worth the price.

[ironbjorn]

I recently just subscribed to BASS. $15 for the year. $15 is one lunch. I won't miss it. I like to have physical copies of things. Can't stand digitalized anything.

[gim]

41 minutes ago, Dwight Hottle said:

For what it's worth In-Fisherman still delivers some of what your looking for

 

This is the only real magazine in paper form I still read.  Its based out of Brainerd/Baxter, MN so many of its articles have a local twist to them, which actually does benefit me here.  I think I pay $9.99/year for 13 editions that come in the mail.

 

Years ago I used to have Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, and Minnesota Outdoors.  The first two were taken over by mostly advertising, and the MN one turned into Midwest something so the local angle went away.

[Team9nine]

I love, research and collect the old fishing history stuff, especially the printed material. I have all the old Fishing Facts mags going back to the 60s, as well as the original In-Fisherman stuff that started in the 70s, not to mention about everything Buck Perry ever set to print. However, I fall perhaps somewhere in the middle of the spectrum here.

 

I haven't subscribed to a fishing magazine in over 20 years, mostly because I feel they’ve all gone downhill in regards to info, content, and advertising. But I also never read or subscribed to Field & Stream, Sports Afield or Outdoor Life, because they never had the content aspect nailed down for me, and half of every article was spent opining about “the wavelets lightly lapping the bank as I approached the shoreline this misty morning, topwater in hand, and anticipating that first perfect cast to the old, scraggly lay down I could just barely make out in the distance” ?

 

I enjoy and appreciate good fishing stories, which is why I watch “On Golden Pond,” or “A River Runs Through It,” and have a lot of John Gierach’s works, but I don’t want that intertwined with my detailed fishing knowledge stuff. There is a time and a place for both. Just me…

[Chris Catignani]

42 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

...“the wavelets lightly lapping the bank as I approached the shoreline this misty morning, topwater in hand, and anticipating that first perfect cast to the old, scraggly lay down I could just barely make out in the distance” .

"Nervously I checked the drag...it was good. Then, like Humphry Bogart, I lit my last joint to ease my nerves. Launched a cast that rocketed forward like an ICBM...only to land in the top of that over hanging sycamore tree."

[Swamp Girl]

2 hours ago, Dwight Hottle said:

Excellent post. For what it's worth In-Fisherman still delivers some of what your looking for especially with regular contributions from Reflections & North with Doc. Unfortunately with all periodicals there are more advertisements & fewer worthwhile articles & less overall content. As I kid I always anxiously awaited my Sports Afield & Outdoor life issues. I also enjoyed Esox magazine, Musky Hunter, In-Fisherman & Fishing Facts. I only read Field & Stream occasionally. 

Thank you, Dwight.

[WRB]

We have a few down to earth members that communicated honestly heart and spirt of good sportsmen’s.

Paul Roberts and Roger (Rolo) come to mind and miss both. Glenn May video’s are honest and informative.

Paul’s video’s are still available in BR archives.

When get older sometimes memories are all we have to cling to.

All we had back in the day was sporting  magazines and a few bass fishing books, the oldest being Dr. Henshaw. The Sports Afield fishing editor in the 50’s was Jason Lucas who took the time to write this young kid letters of advice on what rod and reel to buy locally in SoCal. Jay became my fishing mentor.

Being a charter life member of B.A.S.S. I had every issue until moving a few years back and gave the entire collection to a friend. Still get Bassmaster free.

Also had every In-Fisherman magazine from day 1, kept a few of the early study reports.

So yes I like to read magazines and books. 

Tom

[MN Fisher]

23 minutes ago, WRB said:

Paul’s video’s are still available in BR archives.

His YouTube channel is still up too - he even put a new short vid (2 minutes) out there beginning of May.

[Drawdown]

I was struck by how even writers for local papers used to have fantastic prose (see below). Seems like English departments around the country got in an arms race to out-Hemingway Hemingway himself when teaching students, who went on to become editors. Combined with the social media-fication of writing, you end up with the ICBM metaphor above (wish it were hyperbole, but it hardly is).

 

https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/nu-fishing/ 

[bowhunter63]

Absolutely. Wish they would bring Smallmouth Magazine back. They all were great back then. 

[Chris Catignani]

26 minutes ago, Drawdown said:

I was struck by how even writers for local papers used to have fantastic prose (see below). Seems like English departments around the country got in an arms race to out-Hemingway Hemingway himself when teaching students, who went on to become editors. Combined with the social media-fication of writing, you end up with the ICBM metaphor above (wish it were hyperbole, but it hardly is).

 

https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/nu-fishing/ 

Hemingway would certainly call this "loose construction".

[Captain Phil]

Excellent topic.  It's been years since I bought a magazine of any kind.  The only place where I miss them is in the bathroom.  I worked for a newspaper when I was young and I have been the fishing editor for a few small newspapers.  Today, I am paid to write fishing articles for Internet websites.  Text content drives Internet Search Engine clicks.  The more clicks, the more advertising revenue a website generates.  To publish a magazine, you must produce, print and distribute physical copies.  Posting an article on the Internet can happen in less than a few seconds.  Nobody reads anymore. People want a show and tell.  YouTube videos generate millions of dollars for their developers.   It's all about money and there is no money in paper content. 

[GRiver]

6 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

hate the busy-ness of fishing magazines today, which are littered with breathless lies, like "37 Surefire Way to Catch Bass!"

I don’t get hard copies any more, there are more advertising than actual articles.
The “27 ways to catch bass” is classic, I hope after trying “27 different ways to catch bass” one works. 
Forgot #28 the “ betts nets”, it’s a sure fire way to get something.
I like the open, non bias opinions you can get here, I like to find out what doesn’t work and why as much as what works. 
 

 

[The Bassman]

Of current writers I really enjoy Doug Stange's recollections. Makes for wonderful diversion in the crazy times we live in.

[Swamp Girl]

3 hours ago, Drawdown said:

I was struck by how even writers for local papers used to have fantastic prose (see below). Seems like English departments around the country got in an arms race to out-Hemingway Hemingway himself when teaching students, who went on to become editors. Combined with the social media-fication of writing, you end up with the ICBM metaphor above (wish it were hyperbole, but it hardly is).

 

https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/nu-fishing/ 

Great link. Thanks!

[Cbump]

Sorry, not into the touchy feely stuff. 

[Bankbeater]

I like the "A Day on the Lake" series in Bassmaster, but that's about it.

[steve carpenter]

Need to pull out Jason Lucas book and read it again. Really liked his articles. Have had it for over 60 years and most is still pertinent.

[Spankey]

4 hours ago, bowhunter63 said:

Absolutely. Wish they would bring Smallmouth Magazine back. They all were great back then. 

That was my favorite. I bet I could find some old issues if I dig around. 

[Columbia Craw]

Yes but I don’t miss the blue jump suits, trucker hats and cotton vests with patches.