Wow – 20 years! Yes that’s a double decade the blog has been going, Against Men and Fish started in 2006 and is still going strong (admittedly there have been a few little wobbles along the way where it almost felt like a bit of a bind and if you’re a regular reader, you’ve can’t have failed to notice the current rather long satellite delay between a match being fished and the report going live!).
I’m not going to wax lyrically about why I started the blog (that was covered very thoroughly when I reached 10 years and that post can be found here – A Decade On and Still Going Strong) although it’s funny re-reading that post that I signed off with ‘Here’s to the next ten years!’ and we’ve now reached that point. It’s definitely true that time speeds up as you get older and looking back I wish I’d done things differently on lots of fronts (not just fishing) but that’s life.
If you wanted to go right back to the beginning you could read my first ever post here (it won’t take you long!) as I took my first tentative steps into the world of blogging. The blessing and the curse of writing a fishing blog (especially one about fishing matches) is that you have to publish good and bad (and to be honest I wouldn’t want it any other way, you get it warts and all). There’s no hiding place, if I’ve drawn a flier and mucked it up, fished like a numpty or poor prep has cost me, I try and be honest. The thing with YouTube or Facebook etc is the anglers who post their results can be quite selective and if you didn’t know better, you could be forgiven for thinking they win every match they fish!
I think my posts have improved over the years, more photos and I think the writing has got better, I probably don’t go into as much detail these days and the reports are a little more concise (thankfully I hear you cry!) and despite what some may say, there is no copying and pasting or use of any AI tools. Whereas in the early days I used to fish once a week, now it’s two or three times and sometimes more (hence the backlog).
The blog has opened some doors and appearing in Match Fishing magazine and The Angler’s Mail have been personal highlights for me, as a keen youngster I couldn’t wait each week and month for the latest issues of those (and others) to come out so I could read about my heroes and learn about tactics and different species of fish, to actually appear in those mags was very surreal. It also enabled me to publish my book ‘Game, Net & Match‘ admittedly a bit of a shameless plug but why not?, something I’m proud of and would’ve loved my mum and dad to have been around to read it.
Talking of my parents, fishing and writing the blog massively helped me through losing them and it also probably kept me sane during the Covid pandemic. Along with my match reports, there’s loads of content in the blog, tackle reviews, interviews and random ramblings, some of which I think are quite thought provoking and a really good read (even if I do say so myself), have a browse and let me know what you think.
I don’t want to drone on too much (when has that ever stopped me before!) so what have I got planned to celebrate 20 years of Against Men and Fish? Well for starters, there’s another great interview scheduled to be published tomorrow, I will be endeavoring to catch up with the back log so expect lots of reports coming soon and hopefully thanks to the generosity of the blogs supporters Bait-Tech and Colmic, there’ll be a couple of nice giveaways for you, so keep checking back for details of how to win some great prizes. I’ll also be having a look at some of their new products in the coming weeks.
Well I think that’s enough for now, hopefully I’ll still be around for the 30th anniversary (or should I make it the 25th just to be on the safe side!).
