Mark Holmes - Editor
Mark joined the company in April 2005. His attraction for working on the carp titles at DHP was undoubtedly, his love of the subject matter. Mark would be the first to admit he is a carp angler through and through. With over 30 years experience, he can claim a very impressive personal best list of other species.
Initially, employed as an Editorial Assistant on Total Carp and Advanced Carp, Mark quickly advanced to take over the reins of Advanced Carp Fishing in October 2005. Mark’s biggest carp, caught in June 2006, is the UK’s largest surface-caught fish at 61lb 4oz. A lesser known fact about secret squirrel Mark, is he is the first angler to catch three different 50’s from the UK in one season.
Tel: +44 (0) 1327 311999
Fax: +44 (0) 1327 311190
E-mail: markholmes@dhpub.co.uk
Richard Stewart - Editorial Assistant
Richard joined the Advanced Carp Fishing team in 2005, after completing a master’s degree in fish ecology. Originally from the northwest, he started his carping career on the silty northern lakes before heading south in search of the clear-water, gravel-pit carp that he’d grown up reading about. He likes nothing more than targeting wild waters with unknown potential.
A bit of a carp geek, Richard is able to indulge his fascination for all things carpy by going out and shooting live features with some of the UK’s very best carp anglers. Rich sums up his carp fishing by saying: “For me, carp fishing isn’t about squeezing into the last available swim on a Friday night; I’d rather test myself against forgotten waters with neglected carp. I’ve got a list of such waters that I’d like to have a crack at over the next few years – it’s just a matter of finding the time!”
Tel: 01327 311999
Fax: 01327 311190
E-mail: richardstewart@dhpub.co.uk
Advanced Carp Fishing is aimed at the aspirational carper. If you’ve caught your first twenty, or if you simply want to catch much bigger fish, this is the magazine for you. It's packed full of easy-reading features, eye-pleasing photos and loads of top tips from the best carp anglers in England. In our view it's the carp magazine that sets the standards others aspire to.
The Complete History Of Advanced Carp Fishing Magazine
Cast your mind back more than a decade to 1995. Carp fishing was very different then to how it is now. The ‘revolution’ had just begun, with more and more anglers switching from general coarse fishing to carp fishing. The carp industry was still in a ‘cottage’ state – with lots of innovators working from small warehouse units and even garden sheds in an attempt to make some money – and there weren’t as many big fish for people to catch as there are these days.
Now, of course, a 20lb carp isn’t considered huge anymore, and companies like Korda, Kryston, Nash and Fox are multimillion-pound organisations. It’s amazing how much things can change over the course of 10 or 11 years!
It was a similar situation when it came to carp fishing magazines. There were fewer specialist carp titles around in 1995, and those that were on the newsagents’ shelves (such as Carpworld and Big Carp) weren’t comparable, either in terms of sales figures or design, to angling titles in other sectors. The likes of Improve Your Coarse Fishing, Trout and Salmon and Sea Angler led the way by some considerable margin.
David Hall, MD of DHP, saw a gap in the market and recognised that carp fishing was going to become huge in the UK. He reacted to this by deciding to launch a new carp magazine. The aim was simple – for it to become number one in the marketplace within a year or two of it first being published. So the concept for Advanced Carp Fishing (ACF) magazine was born. A launch editor, Bob Roberts, was found, and ACF hit the shelves for the first time as a quarterly title in the spring of 1995, for the princely sum of £2. Bob was provided with a simple brief – to create an instructional magazine for the angler who buys boilies, not the angler who makes them.
This philosophy was key to the magazine’s success. DHP and editor Bob wanted easy-to-follow tips and instructional articles, all aimed at the beginner and intermediate carp angler, to help him (or her) catch more fish. Such articles, it was thought, were not available in any other carp fishing magazine at the time.
Bob did a sterling job and within a year the magazine was a roaring success, so much so that it became bimonthly in 1996. Sales figures rose steadily from one issue to the next and ACF eventually became the UK’s biggest-selling carp magazine.
Bob spent six years at the helm of ACF before being replaced by Jim Foster in March 2001. Editing ACF didn’t prove too much of a problem for Jim, and sales figures kept on rising – even though he was editing Total Carp (which was launched in 1999) single-handedly at the same time.
Jim managed ACF for just over a year. His tenure at the helm was really only a stop-gap measure while DHP searched for a new, full-time editor – and that man was found in 2002, when ACF went monthly for the first time.
When Martin Ford took over, he decided he wanted to take it in a new direction. No longer was this going to be seen as an “advanced magazine for beginners,” which was a criticism often levelled at DHP by competitors jealous of its success (competitors who didn’t appreciate the fact that ACF was part of the ‘Advanced’ series of fishing magazines published by DHP). Martin’s philosophy was to make ACF live up to its title. He filled its pages full of top-end technical tips, tricks and instruction, written by the very best carp anglers in the UK who were fishing for the country’s biggest fish.
This was to prove a popular move with the readership, and in 2003 ACF released officially audited sales figures for the first time. Its biggest-selling issue almost hit the 20,000 mark under Martin’s leadership, a credit to his ability as a carp angler who understood the market he was writing for.
Today ACF is the second-biggest carp magazine on the market, behind Total Carp, with an average monthly sale of more than 16,000 copies. Sales are still growing year on year, and current editor Mark Holmes, who has been in charge since spring 2005, has carried on where Martin left off.
Mark is a big-fish angler through and through. In 2006 he managed to catch the UK’s biggest-ever surface caught carp, a fish of 61lb. He’s also bagged a fifty since he became editor, along with many specimens over 30lb. This brings a further credibility to the magazine that, until 2005, it didn’t really have.
Mark’s view on ACF is easy to understand. “If carp anglers want to read a good mix of the latest big-fish tactics, instruction, stories of awesome captures and honest tackle reviews, then ACF is for them,” he says. “The same is true if they simply aspire to catching big fish.
“Nowhere else in the carp market does a magazine cater for this specialist readership today.”
