“I blame the carp magazines…” – It’s something I hear so often when people talk about the so-called demise of carp fishing. For me, though, it’s not as simple as that. You can’t simply blame the magazines and the media for all that is wrong with the sport – they’re the effect and not the cause.
Society is changing so fast in technological terms that it’s a struggle for many of the current generation to keep up and we’re shifting wholesale from a society that had to work hard to find things out for itself to a society that can obtain knowledge at the push of a button. However, there’s a massive difference between knowing something and understanding it!
If you look at changing trends over the last twenty years, it’s shocking, especially in the young; a huge amount no longer partake in pastimes that impart true understanding and knowledge; few read books, few spend decent amounts of time with parents, guardians, family or friends who have traditionally passed down knowledge and skill sets. The majority of today’s younger generation have been brought up with the likes of Facebook and PS3; increasingly pushed an online social utopia, but one in which if they’re not careful, they actually become more insular…
Like many of my generation, I’m blessed that I had family around me at a young age that nurtured my curiosity, encouraged me to think freely in order that I could work things out for myself, and what’s more, a family that kicked me out of the house every day after school to meet new people and forge new relationships in the real world! As a result, I’ve used the core skills gained in every facet of my life ever since and not just in angling. If I don’t know how to do something I’ll research it, think about it, come up with a strategy to try it out for myself, and then – through trial error – keep refining my approach until I’ve mastered it. It’s no different in angling terms – it’s just that we call it ‘watercraft’.
And therein lies the problem, many simply don’t have the core skills to think freely; to form and adapt a plan to bring about a success – they just do what they think is the right or quickest thing to do. All the angling media are doing is providing content and ideas – whether the individual reading it can truly learn from it is another thing altogether! We’re always quick to blame the media, when a lot of the time it’s the people picking up the magazines we should be concentrating on!
For the enquiring mind, any form of content can only be a good thing if it can add to one’s true understanding. I read tons of angling material each month in magazines, books, or on websites – yet I don’t suddenly find myself compelled to tie up the latest wonder rigs on all my rods or upgrade to the latest fancy tackle as a result – just the opposite – in even the most basic of articles on some of the most mundane topics that have been done to death a thousand times, I’ll often pick up just that one tiny piece of information about somebody’s approach or experiences that provokes my curiosity – a snippet of information that could just add to my armoury when faced with a similar scenario again when out on the banks in the future – it’s all about what the individual can take from any form of content that’s key, not what the content may or may not be about in itself.
So get reading!
Julian Grattidge
Northwestcarp.co.uk
January 2012
