NUMBER ONE AGAIN!
Just as I was putting the finishing touches to this update blog I received an
e-mail from the folks at Hit Wise. Once again WSF has won the Hit Wise No 1 web
site award for having the most visitors in its industry section (Sports –
Fishing). This is the fourth quarter in a row that we have won this award, it
is a testament to the fact of how hard everybody at WSF works to keep the site
going and to the community of anglers that now use WSF.
LACK OF UPDATES AND MTI
I must apologise for the lack of updates of late, October is an especially busy
month for all at WSF with Trade Shows and the Tackle and Guns show. October
also saw the launch of MTI, the new brand of sea angling tackle from World Sea
Fishing. MTI uses some of the best rod building materials available to create
rods that are powerful, yet light weight and slim line. The range includes 3
shore rods and 2 boat rods. We also have 6 luggage items including our unique
fabric Bait Caddy, especially designed for Shore Anglers. We are over the moon
with the reception the kit has received from retailers, anglers and the
press so far. Our new web site MTI Fishing will be launched shortly which will
provide details of the entire range as well as reports, videos and pictures
from our field testing over the past 2 years. World Sea Fishing
is also delighted to announce that Shakespeare Company UK will be the
distributors of MTI in the UK and Europe.
TACKLE AND GUNS SHOW 2007
The Tackle and Guns show was especially good this year and plenty of people
turned up! It was great to put names to faces that I talk to daily via E-mail
but had never actually met in person. It was also brilliant to have a chat to
people I hadn’t seen for years. Especially Russ Symons who now has me converted
as a certified Accurate Reel Fan, and Stuart Hopkin who was working the Orvis
stand and took me around the Orvis Helios range of fly rods. I can’t wait to
get my hands on the 5weight for my trout fishing and one of the saltwater rods
next year. It was also a pleasure to meet Paul Boyer, from Spotty Dog Tackle.
PLYMOUTH
Immediately after T and G, I set off for the milder climes of the South West
and Plymouth. Fishing aboard Sea Angler 2 run by Malcolm Jones. I wasn’t really
fishing as I had a lot of camera work to do for catalogues and web sites, but I
still managed to get an hour in at the end of the day and bag a few species.
Species fishing just has to be the most fun anybody can have with a rod, big
fish are great, but for me nothing quite compares to dinking variety out during
the day. Next year will definitely be a year of increasing my all time UK Sea
Species tally beyond 54 – with 60 the target for the end of next year.
SERVER MOVE
The new server move is completed, hurrah! At last the server is up and running
and all of the data from the original server has now been moved to our new one.
We hope this will keep us in good stead now for another year to a year and a
half, if the site continues to grow at its present pace.
As part of the move the WSF Shop has moved to its new domain name wsftackle.com. This move has been done for a variety of reasons and will mean the shop will always be live even if (we hope it never does) the WSF web site goes down at any point. We have added quite a few new items to the shop since the last update including Penn Lines and Reels, and also MTI Rods. Our package and Christmas Deals will be launched on the 12th of November as well as our new loyal customer scheme.
As I promised in February, and the more observant of you will have noticed this, but the advertisements across the site are being reduced as well as their placements changed. As the shop begins to generate the funds required to pay the mortgage of server and bandwidth fees we will continue to remove more. The biggest change has been the removal of most of the adverts from our article pages as well as less intrusive placement which I hope you agree, makes reading the articles much more of a pleasure. The evidence is also that this has increased readership across the magazine section of WSF, with the magazine posting a 35% increase in readership in October.
Until next time, Tight Lines ;)
