The Carp Angling Magazine & Book Specialist

Through the 80s the only carp-fishing magazines available were those published by the carp organisations; the Carp Society’s half-yearly Carp Fisher, the Carp Anglers Association’s half-yearly Carp Catcher, and the BCSG’s Carp, published annually. Tim Paisley was the founding editor of the first colour carp magazine, Carp Fisher, first published in November 1981. Through the 80s Tim could see that the world of carp fishing was expanding and anticipated the need for a regular carp publication available on the streets via the newsstands. In 1987 he approached a distributor to see if a commercial carp magazine would work. Initially resistance was high. There were already two angling weeklies, and a couple of angling monthlies, but the idea of a single-species angling magazine was looked on with scepticism.

Fortunately one specialist distributor, the late Hylton-Lacey from Ascot , was impressed enough by Tim’s work with Carp Fisher to take on board the concept of a newsstand carp magazine. It took nearly a year of negotiations but in the spring of 1988 publishing and distribution agreement was reached. The first issue of Carpworld – then quarterly – was published in late August 1988. Over the first couple of years ‘quarterly’ soon became bi-monthly, then, when the first newsstand competitor appeared in the shape of Rob Maylin’s Big Carp, Carpworld went monthly, and has gone from strength to strength ever since. Angling Publications then decided to launch Crafty Carper in 1997 and in 2003 the additional titles Carp-Trade and International Carper were added to the list of monthly magazines published by the company.

Book publishing has always been part of Angling Publications’ activities, although the early flurry of titles came at a time when magazines sales were clearly impacting on book sales. In the early 90s the book publishing was put on the back burner for a few years. With the continuing growth of carp fishing the book market opened up again in the late 90s, and through our thriving mail-order business we are now the largest independent stockist of carp angling books. We continue to publish our own titles, too, and now have quite a collection to our name all of which are available on www.thecarpstore.co