CARPology Magazine

Headlining Issue 280 is The Long Road To Bullnose, Tom Loraine’s extraordinary account of a two-year pursuit that very nearly ended almost as soon as it began. His first real chance resulted in a hook-pull, but what followed was two years of stops, starts, setbacks, relentless repetition and plenty of other carp—before Tom finally found himself attached to Bullnose once again. This time, the story had a very different ending.

Elsewhere, we kick off a huge two-part interview with Lewis Read. Bright-Eyed and Bushy Tales goes right back to where it all started, tracing Lewis’s journey through Bushy Park, Shepperton and those legendary Yateley years, the characters he met along the way—including Terry Hearn and Ian Chillcott—and eventually his move into the tackle trade. It’s a wonderfully nostalgic look at a very different era of carp fishing, but with plenty of observations that still feel hugely relevant today.

We also bring together ‘eight anglers, eight autumns and eight defining moments’ for The Autumn That Changed Me, while Mike ‘Spug’ Redfern delivers the concluding part of his epic interview, talking books, fishing, legacy and why, in his own words, “Yeah, I’m done!”

And there’s plenty of hardware and how-to thinking too: we get our hands on a remarkable £549 mini bait boat complete with GPS, sonar and a 2kg payload; go microscopic on the Slip-D, identifying the seven little details you absolutely must get right; and Julian Cundiff asks whether we’ve all become a little too obsessed with baiting on a sixpence.

Plus, you’ll find Adam Penning, Bill Cottam, Stu Lennox and Kieran Hopkinson inside another absolutely stacked issue.