lets hope David has enjoys his retirement, I have purchased match fishing from day one however the present format depicted in the magazines is a far cry from the innovative early days, these days we see head to head matches with anglers using different baits or alternatively sponsored anglers doing a feature on a venue either promoting the venue or promoting his sponsor, normally these are done midweek on an empty venue with no pressure and is an absolute con, this no more represents match fishing than a pleasure angler bagging up on his favourite venue on a pleasure day in his favourite peg during the week ,using his favourite bait on a venue devoid of anglers something we have all done! I long for the day when the magazine is more match fishing focused/orientated showing top anglers fishing matches warts and all or features on the local venue expert who wins or frames most weeks actually going through his paces on a match, there are lots of top anglers who blow out very often instead of living on past glories and hype lets see more articles of these lads fishing in the lions den (on a match) and under pressure. or will that spoil the reporters weekend?

Totally agree Fred..Match Fishing Magazine these days is going more and more towards Carp fishing on puddles which are’nt the most challenging venues on the planet…And as you say its a head to head on an empty pool and takes up about five pages,not really that interesting…However what I don’t and will never understand is, when you get the Evesham bank holiday festival which covers three days,they cover the whole weekend in three pages…thats just terrible…I know it has to be Carp this and Carp that at the moment but after June 16th theres a lot of big events on the rivers every weekend with Riverfest and Evesham qualifiers to name two and I am sure there are others going on, so there is no excuse for some serious reports on winning methods, baits tactics and interviews with winners every weekend and I don’t mean one hundred word reports!!…thats at least eight features for every monthly read….after all if I want to read about Carp fishing I will buy the Carp Fishing magazine.

I don’t mind whether they report on matches on natural venues or carp puddles, I don’t even mind the educational features on new methods, what I don’t want is the pointless Bl**dy pleasure sessions, or head to head fishing different baits ( how is that an even contest), what a waste of space, but to compound the problem it’s the same format every month!