INTERVIEW
NEW SERIES
In anew series we talk to some of the key individuals who have helped to shape UK sea angling as we know it. This month, Tim Macpherson talks to one of the nicest blokes in sea angling, Jim Whippy : angling journalist, match angler and boat fishing legend
TM: What got you hooked on sea fishing?
JW: My passion was football but I wrecked the cartilage in my right knee. To put it right would have meant an operation and weeks off work. This wasn’t possible at the time as I was a self-employed carpet fitter with a young family, so I had to find a sport to fulfil my competitive nature. I lived by the sea at Pevensey Bay and enjoyed both boat and beach fishing as an occasional hobby; I decided to switch over and focus fully on sea fishing. It was the best thing I ever did as I took to it like a duck to water and I can still enjoy fishing from my boat and from the shore.
TM: What do you regard as your greatest achievement?
JW: The fact that I have been lucky enough to have successfully fished at a high level in all aspects of sea fishing, including deep sea, charter boats, dinghy fishing, light tackle, game fishing and shore fishing.
TM: You have been responsible for launching anumber of successful angling magazines over the past 25 years. What initially started you writing about sea angling?
JW: Sea angling was never featured in my local newspaper, the Eastbourne Herald, until I started putting in some match results and the odd picture of local anglers with the fish they caught. It took off and I eventually started to get paid for it. In the early 1990s my carpet business was hit by the recession, so someone suggested I should start a free sea angling paper and sell advertising to support it. So, I did and Sea Angling News was born. It’s probably the hardest job I have ever had. Initially producing the paper was costing me more than the adverting revenue I was getting. To cut costs I learnt how to set up and create the complete paper on an Apple Mac, having never switched on a computer before.
It took six months before I managed it and from then on, the paper boomed. After about five years of publishing Sea Angling News, Tony Kirrage, of Tony’s Tackle fame, recommended me to David Hall Publishing which wanted to publish a sea angling magazine to go up against Sea Angler and was looking for a start-up editor! I jumped at the chance to work on a full colour magazine and so Total Sea Fishing was created. It became very successful, never reaching the readership of Sea Angler but it found a solid niche. After editing the magazine for a few years, I realised I could be stuck just earning a wage as editor and the only way to progress was to start my own magazine – again. I managed to find a backer for my dream project and promptly handed in my resignation. Six months later I launc
