Men Who Matter - David Hall

Profiled by John Bailey

I’m rather proud to be putting together this piece because David Hall means a great deal to me. He probably won’t be well known outside the UK but within it, David is an important figure within the publishing industry and, importantly, an example of how one man can go it alone and stand up to the corporations. It began like this, back in 1975 when David began publishing a magazine called Coarse Fisherman. It was rough, crude but it spoke real truth that proper fisherman instantly recognised. I was captivated, got in touch and the rest, as they say, after over three hundred articles contributed to the magazine, is history.

“I was the MD of a firm manufacturing loudspeakers in the early 70s,” David says. “Trouble was I hated it and I wondered if I could make a living out of fishing. It wasn’t that I instantly looked at publishing but I had the idea that I could do something for myself within the sport that I loved. I’d spent money on advertising with hi-fi magazines so I had several contacts and over a plethora of lunches I asked what I needed to do to get up and running. Get an editor, I was told. I could do that. And an ad man, I was lucky to know John Carding. Thereafter, I realised all I needed was a printer and a distributor and I was in business.”

David certainly was. For ten great years Coarse Fisherman rewrote all the rules in the publishing game. It was irreverent – the column Snide Rumours and Dirty Lies was the hot news in fishing at the time. It was ground-breaking. David, through his contacts with Richard Walker, located a whole generation of up and coming anglers who found their voice in the pages of Coarse Fisherman. Myself, John Wilson, Kevin Clifford, Terry Eustace, Grahame Marsden and several other now grand old men were given their chance thirty years ago in the fledgling Coarse Fisherman.

David lived rather like he wrote, always close to the edge. He’d stay with me frequently in the early days and invariably tip me so far over the edge holding a rod the next morning was purgatory. We’d have long phone calls, late into the night, analysing this article or that, perhaps fearing competition, both of us unsure about the future. As the magazine had a circulation of twenty-five thousand – a lot in this country at any age – there didn’t seem too many clouds on David’s horizon.

Then, in 1985, his distributors went into liquidation owing him a small fortune. The bank wound up on his loan and Coarse Fisherman passed into other hands. But David isn’t the one to lie down. Not for anybody. His new partner, Cherry, mortgaged her house so that the Hall name could be up and running once more. Exactly twenty-one years ago, David Hall Publishing was launched and its success has become legendary. Today, DHP puts out ten titles, employs seventy staff and has a turnover of millions. David, who once produced Coarse Fisherman out of his back bedroom, is now a UK publishing sensation.

Not that he’s standing still. Years ago he produced films and latterly, he’s into DVDs. His Master Class series is in its early stages but the chances are it will prove a real boon for the fly fishing enthusiast. David may have begun as a match angler but the past thirty years has led him into investigating every aspect of the sport. So how has he succeeded where so many others have failed? “I guess,” he says, “it’s all about patience. In many ways I’ve stood still since 1975 in terms of ambition. What I’ve always tried to do is to get better and make my products more attractive and more relevant.”

I have many memories of David but perhaps this one says the most about the man. It was in 1978, I guess, and I was a teacher then running an angling club in a city high school. It was a Friday night and David volunteered to drive two hundred miles to give a talk to the lads after school. It was winter and I, for one, wouldn’t have fancied the journey but David arrived all smiles. He spoke for an hour and was riveting – and I knew just how hard those kids were to inspire. He answered questions for another hour – an achievement in itself to involve them to that degree. He then distributed free copies of the magazine along with a goodie bag of floats and hooks to each and every lad. They went home buzzing.

David Hall. A good, talented, inspirational character who deserves every jot of success he’s now enjoying.