By Tom | No Comments
Last updated: Friday, February 8, 2008

Tom first started fishing aged seven, after trying deep sea fishing on a family holiday. Returning back home to his native Sheffield, he decided to give coarse fishing a go, and after two unsuccessful trips, finally managed to catch a fish on his third outing, after a fellow angler showed him the basics!

After this he was well and truly hooked however, and constanly nagging his parents to take him fishing!

Tom was an occasional angler from this point forward, but the fishing bug really grabbed him when aged 16, he met up with Roy Davies, who ran a junior fishing club.

Roy took Tom under his wing and helped him establish himself as a young match angler, competing in junior matches with the club most weekends.

Unfortunately, after a year of fishing with the junior club it disbanded, and although Tom and a fellow young angler tried to keep it going, interest was dwindling.

This forced Tom to try his hand in senior matches, and with the help of local tackle dealer Mark Holmes, Tom joined thriving senior club, Norton AC.

It was at a similar sort of time that Tom met Angling Star editor Jim Baxter, and began to write the odd piece for the paper, before being given a monthly column in august 2005.

By the early part of 2006, Tom was starting to compete in matches, and along with some of his fellow Woodseats anglers, decided to chance his arm in the Angling Times Supercup competition. With Mark Holmes heading up the already successful A team, Tom stepped in as captain of the B team.

The team cruised successfully through the preliminary rounds, and after a close fought battle managed to qualify for the final of the competition, finishing fifth in the semi finals at Heronbrook in a match that saw Tom scoop individual victory with a 104-0-0 net of carp, beating a field of 102 anglers.

Unfortunately, the team weren’t quite so successful in the final, but still finished a respectable twelfth, out of 21 of the country’s top club teams, a feat they bettered the year after when the team once again reached the final and finished fifth.

2006 was also a successful year for Tom on the local scene, with him winning two local clubs leagues, and also enjoying increased success on the open match circuit.

After leaving university in April 2007 with a Degree in English, Tom was taken on by former Angling Times editor Keith Higginbottom, to head up new magazine Northern Angling Today, as a part of his publishing group, Regional Angling Magazines.

The magazine proved extremely popular among anglers in the North of England, with copy sales growing month on month. Unfortunately, the publishing group as a whole was struggling financially however, and in December 2007 the group went into suspension, causing production of the magazine to cease.

As the saying goes, all clouds have a silver lining however, and when a mutual friend introduced Tom to website owner and entrepreneur Mark Cooper, who along with son Lee had just purchased a fishing site, a new partnership was founded.

In the future, Tom aims to continue to learn and develop his match fishing skills, alongside making Fishing4Fun the number one fishing site on the internet!

The team at fishing4fun want to extend their thanks to Keith Higginbottom of Regional Angling Magazines for granting us the use of much of the initial content of the site.