Julian Cundiff: The Everyman

Nearly all carp anglers can relate to Julian Cundiff, right? Because he seems like one of us, which is exactly the image that Jules chose to cultivate when he started out on his carping odyssey. It’s clearly served him well too, because he’s still here, 30 years on…

30 years on, what is it that keeps Julian’s enthusiasm at an all-time high?

Why would a guy with a demanding job and precious little time to fish already, hand-write a reply to every single letter that dropped through his letterbox from carp anglers eager for his advice, for years? I was one of those anglers and I can still remember his spidery writing and even the advice he gave me on fishing in deep silt. I don’t worry so much about the nuances of silt fishing these days, but Jules is still diligently replying to every tweet or message he gets on Facebook. On the long drive North to his home, in an isolated Yorkshire village, I had cause to wonder whether the most approachable guy in carp fishing was really like that in private? With retirement looming and more fishing on the horizon, wasn’t it about time he handed the mantle onto someone else? Come to think of it, would anyone ever give so freely of themselves in carp fishing? Almost certainly not…

Why have you never become involved full time in the fishing trade?
“Well, I guess if you look back at my history, I was lucky enough to get a job back in the late 1970s or early 1980s with a court and it’s a steady job. It was quite nice to combine both; I was combining my writing with the court. Despite what people think of me - this really outgoing bloke, you know; the pop world, the rock world and all that stuff, I’m as steady as they go. I am as planned as they come, and to be honest, everybody that I saw get involved with the trade seemed to be dulled by it. I’ve always been an angler first, a lover of carp literature second, a lover of writing third and a lover of the carp industry fourth. I didn’t meet one person, other than maybe Tim Paisley, who had the same passion when they became involved in carp fishing as they did before. I didn’t want to be that person.”

You’ve clearly had offers, principle you didn’t turn the Carpworld editorship into a full time job when you were doing it.
“My involvement of Carpworld goes back pre-Carpworld actually, to Carp Fisher. I wrote a letter to Tim personally, at his home address and he liked my article, told me how I could improve it and to maybe get my photos in focus and we became friends. Tim clearly saw something in me and took me on as Carp Fisher Features Editor in about 1987 and I started writing more and more. Tim then set-up Carpworld in 1988 and asked me to write for the first one, which is what I did. Within a couple of years Tim realised that he couldn’t do the magazine on his own, and I am good at sourcing material; I know my history, I know my people, I’m personable – people would do things for me. I was prepared to drive down South to do the Savay interviews for Carp Fisher, and I wouldn’t get paid, I would ring people up, chase them for material; Tim knew I was good at that. So when Tim stood down he probably wanted for me to take over the role as editor.”

Jules’ involvement of Carpworld goes back pre-Carpworld actually, to Carp Fisher

Do you think that you disappointed him by turning it down?
“I think I did yeah, but we’re still mates. Being honest, I should have told him a lot earlier that I wasn’t going to do it, but it’s one of those things that you put off. I loved being involved with Carpworld, I loved being seen as Tim’s right-hand man and the face of Carpworld. I didn’t know how Tim was going to take it, and there are some people, at some magazines, who have the ‘it’s my way or the highway’ attitude. I knew that Tim wasn’t like that but I kept putting off the decision until Tim needed an answer. He was very kind to me and explained in print that I couldn’t commit to the job and they got Simon (Crow) instead. I mean, I didn’t get the boot, obviously I wasn’t the editor anymore and I was disappointed not to see my name at the top but I didn’t get the boot and that’s the mark of the man.”

You edited Crafty Carper when it was at its best, do you miss putting together a carp title?
“Absolutely. My strength is coming up with ideas, interacting with people, and getting material from them. My strength is not being sat behind a computer, cut, paste, edit – that’s not my strength. The majority of the ideas in the early Carpworld years were my ideas about things, and yes, I do miss it, and, as you’ve said, I do think it was at its best in terms of ideas when I was involved.”

Tim Paisley set-up Carpworld in 1988 and asked Jules to write for the first one, which is what he did

Being of the magazine-buying generation around the time that Crafty launched, I remember well the cover with Terry Hearn and the brace of commons, that must have been quite a coup?
“Well, Carpworld was a huge strength when it came to getting the people. Remember, Crafty was the instructional side of Carpworld if you like. We always paid people, we looked after them and it was a family. When you picked up Carpworld you didn’t think, ‘Oh, it’s the same old faces’; it was a family. In Crafty, we either brought in new faces, or got the same faces to reveal their technical stuff. I remember doing the interviews, you know, with the Jan Porters of this world, and it really worked. I think Crafty was a really strong magazine in those days, really strong.”

What do you think of the media scene as it is today?
“Production-wise, the magazines of today kill the ones from the past. I’ve also got to look at it through today’s angler’s eyes, rather than my eyes, because that’d be through rose-tinted glasses. I think there is a danger of people trying to be the same as everyone else. Certain things sell, so let’s all have beards, not mention the weight of fish, steaming kettle shots, not naming waters – it can become a bit samey. The magazines are great though, and I still buy almost every single carp fishing magazine, and that’s from a guy who’s been doing it for 30 years. I don’t think they have the romance of the Carpworlds, the Carp Fishers, but it’s a different world.”

A lot of happy memories being “part of the family”

You were a lot closer to the inception of modern carp fishing then. Arguably, things had moved less far from 1952 to 1989, than they had between 1989 and now. Things have picked up apace.
“If you ask me when the golden era for carp fishing was, I’d have to say between 1984 and 1999. That really was a magical era. I think that naturally it’s become a bit too corporate but that’s the way of the world, and I don’t have any complaints about that because my back doesn’t hurt on the modern bedchairs, my hooks don’t open out, you can cast to the horizon and the carp are twice as big.”

Do you think that you hastened the onset of corporate carp fishing yourself, through the professionalism that you brought to it?
“I am probably one of the main reasons that it blew up so quickly, and I’m not blowing my own trumpet there. I read the Maddocks book (Carp Fever) and I read the Hutchinson book (The Carp Strikes Back) and the Hutchy book didn’t really tell me anything about how I could catch them; it made me want to go fishing though. When I picked up Maddocks’ book, it was A+B = C. Up until probably Practical Carp Fishing, there weren’t any technical books. Yes there were better writers than me, and I enjoyed their work but I realised that I didn’t know what size hooks they were using, what type of line they were using, or what type of boilies they were using. That frustrated me, so I decided to write a book and I’d be telling them exactly what I was doing. I wasn’t saying this is the best, but I was telling people what I did and that it worked. It literally exploded. I’m not saying that it was me that made it explode, but I was one of the very first technical writers of my generation.”

Bizarrely, there just haven’t been many technical books with that kind of popularity since.
“You look back at Practical Carp Fishing now, and yes it’s dated, but the principles hold. A lot of the generation that followed me from the late-1980s to the mid-1990s will say, “What inspired us were your Angling Times pieces and Practical Carp Fishing.” I don’t care if I don’t ever catch another carp in my life, for someone to come up to me and say, that I inspired them to pedal home from school and go carp fishing, that to me is far more important than a big carp that I might catch.”

What’s been the hardest point in your life? Joe (the ed) remembers the wind really being taken out of your sails when you split from long-term girlfriend, Julie, what got you through that?
“That was a real hard part of my life because I’m one of these people who has a plan. I wasn’t born gifted by any means. I was the chubby kid at school whose mum was a vicar, who had pet rabbits, who liked rock magazines, who didn’t dance, who didn’t drink, who didn’t smoke and who lived in the country and loved carp fishing. Now that is about as weird in the 1970s and 1980s as you could get and that wasn’t going to attract anybody but I was away determined that I wasn’t bothered what anybody else thought, I knew what I liked.

“I had a plan, and I was going to work hard, A, B, C and D were going to happen, and all through my life it did happen. Then I remember when Julie and I parted, thinking, ‘Oh, that really wasn’t in the grand plan’.

“There have been a couple of things in my life where you’ve got to pick yourself up and get on. I was more lazy than brainy as a kid, and I was more interested in carp fishing and Kiss the rock band than I was in studying, so when I did my O levels, I got about six Ds. I just hadn’t done enough to get through and I remember crying like a baby and I remember my mum saying, “I can’t do the exams for you.” At that point I realised that the only person who can do anything for me in this world, is me. Then I grafted, passed my O levels and got on. I realised, bit by bit, that everything is down to me; I can’t cast the rod out for you just as you can’t cast it out for me, it’s down to me.

“When I split up with Julie it did knock the wind out of my sails, but nobody was going to pick me up and carry me. Tim, bless him, he’s lovely man but he just said, “Chin up Jules, we’ve got a magazine to produce!” Do you know, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world with Ros now.”

“You look back at Practical Carp Fishing now, and yes it’s dated, but the principles hold.”

You’ve been fishing overnighters for over 30 years now; is the buzz the same as it was when you were writing your weekly column for the Times on Selby Three Lakes?
“The buzz for carp fishing is the same, but you cannot feel as fit at 55 as you did at 25 and 35, and I look after myself. I am still as excited by carp fishing as I was in 1986; I’m still as excited by a twelve-pounder at one in the morning as I was then, purely and simply because carp fishing is about outwitting them, whether I’m fishing for a fifty-pounder or a fifteen-pounder. When that buzzer goes, and it goes in the net I think, ‘I’ve outwitted you, normally you outwit me, but this time I’ve outwitted you’. Anybody who meets me will say, “He’s still as excited about a cricket-bat common now as he was at Willow Park in 1988.”

Do you miss people writing to you, and sending off your slides in the post, or do you prefer the digital world of instant communication?
“To be honest, the romantic in me does miss that. I used to love writing back to people, drawing diagrams, putting bait recipes in, but we’ve moved on and I enjoy people tweeting me, Facebooking me and being able to give them an instant response. Do you know what? I don’t miss coming home from holiday to 120 letters and thinking, ‘What have I done?’ I’ve never not answered one by the way. So, romantically yes, I miss that, but in reality no.”

“I was with Daiwa from 1989 to 2010.”

What is it in you that means that you were prepared to answer 120 letters on your return from holiday?
“I guess that it’s conscience. I’ve been lucky enough to meet all my fishing heroes; the Maddocks’s, the Littles, the Paisleys, when I was nobody, when I was handing out Daiwa stickers at shows. I remember the impact that people like Andy Little bothering to speak to me, let alone pick me up from the train station to go fishing together, had on me. So I know what impact that letter, that text, that tweet has on other people. People laugh, saying, “How posey is it having your photo taken with a kid at a show?” It is no different for a kid to have his picture taken with Terry, Dave or me, than it is for a rock fan to have his picture taken with Kiss or Slash…”

You’re still that kid, right?
“I am still that kid! So when a kid wants his picture taken with me, I thank God for that. The reason that I’ve never shied away from it is that I don’t ever want to walk round a conference and have anybody say something bad about me without good reason. Nobody can ever say, “I met him and he couldn’t be bothered to talk to me,” or, “I tweeted him and he never answered.” I’d rather take that to my grave than have people say, “He caught a lot of big fish, but he’s a bit of a dick.”

A lovely note from Jules’ good friend, Kevin Nash

Talk to us about the ups and downs of being a sponsored angler, since your first deal in the 1980s with Daiwa.
“There were fewer people doing it when I started, but you didn’t have the vehicles to get there, through the magazines. Nowadays, you can be an instant star but there are more people chasing it. So it’s worth doing, of course, but you’re not going to have this (gestures indicating the house) on fishing money.”

Has it always been important for you to be involved? Presumably you still hold consultancies of different types?
“Yes, I have a consultancy with Kevin Nash alone, but I receive products from Fox that don’t clash.”

But not Daiwa anymore, because you were central to them at one stage?
“I was at one stage. In 1988/89 I caught the first thirty-pounder from Motorway Pond, and I remember getting a letter through from Kevin Nash and this letter said, “Hi Jules, I’ve been impressed with what you’ve been doing in the magazines and well done on your first thirty-pounder, you may have seen the adverts for the Daiwa Carp Team.” That ad was for the AKN Amorphous rod and the SS3000 and featured Steve Allcott, Shaun Harrison and Kevin Nash, and Kevin went on, “If you want any product support from Daiwa, I’m heading up their Carp Team so we’d be happy to help.”

“Now, with the greatest respect to the other anglers on the team, I was more in touch with Kevin and I was pushing the products that I used. Daiwa realised that carp fishing was going to grow massively and Kevin had his own business that was starting to clash with Daiwa, so I ended up setting up the next Carp Team. We got Brian Skoyles, Paul Selman and I think maybe Martyn Skoyles - there was only three or four of us. That went on for ages and there wasn’t a problem between Nash, Nutrabaits and Daiwa, but it eventually got to the stage where Daiwa realised that to grow as a firm they needed to bring it luggage, buzzers and things like that and that was a conflict.

“So, from 1989 to 2010 I was a consultant for Daiwa. I wrote to Robin Morley at Daiwa, tendering my resignation as a consultant and there was no fall-out; I continued to use the reels and, occasionally the rods, for ages.”

Talk to us about your involvement with what must have been the pre-eminent bait company around when you were forging your carp ‘career’, Nutrabaits.
“My involvement with Nutrabaits actually predates Nutrabaits. I remember going to Tim’s house and we were discussing bait, and Tim said, “Just go and look in that cupboard Jules, and pick a couple of things out.” I went in and picked out the SBS Strawberry Jam, Cornish Ice Cream and there was some Bergamot Oil and some Cotswold Baits Milk B. We looked at it and he said, “Well that’s a good combination; I can’t give you the precise levels, but that’s a good combination.” He gave me various things like the Bengers etc., to make a HNV bait. So we made this bait and, mainly with Bill’s knowledge, Hi-Nu-Val came out.

“Now this was pre-Nutrabaits, so when Nutrabaits started I was getting bait at a discount and yes, from the late 1980s, through to the early 1990s I would say that Nutrabaits was the biggest company.

“Now, in the early 1990s Mainline came out and I remember saying to the guys, “Whoa, these guys know their stuff, you are going to need to start sponsoring anglers, you’re going to have to up your game.” Nutrabaits decided that they were going to stay at a certain level, which was fine, but the thing with carp fishing rising is that if you’re not going forwards, then you’re going backwards and you could see that Mainline were going to be huge. Of course, you had Nashbait as well, the third of the big companies if you like. I was sponsored by Kevin and from time to time he’d say, “You should to come over to the bait,” and at times I wanted to but loyalty always comes before anything else. I was never going to dump Nutrabaits for Nash.

“It got to the early 2000s and I was having trouble getting the bait I wanted, when I wanted it. I’d ask for 12-millers and they wouldn’t have any. So, around that time I got in touch and said, “Look guys, it’s run its course,” there was no fall-out and I left for Nash. I would say that I contributed more to Nutrabaits than I ever took out – they might see it differently, but there you are.”

Celebrating my parents 40th wedding anniversary. They were the glue that held me together in the hard times

Do you think that there’s anybody out there who, through their media work, shows etc., has given more to help spearhead companies in carp fishing for such little financial reward?
“Maybe Tim Paisley, but if you mean anyone without their own fishing brand, no, I can’t think of anybody.”

Why did you do so much for nothing?
“Because I’m not involved in the carp world. I’ve got a nice job in the courts and I didn’t have to go carp fishing to pay for my mortgage or pay for my motorbike. I didn’t want to be that way. I don’t think that anybody could say that I took more out of their firm than I put back in.”

Jules has made some truly amazing memories during the last 30 years

Do you think that when you start taking money, when you go fishing, it’s no longer just for you and that would have ruined you?
“That would have taken off the edge. Don’t get me wrong, there are some occasions when I used to think, ‘I could do with a fish tonight, because it’s been a hard winter and there’s only so many times I can talk about the same things’, so there is a little pressure, but there was never pressure on me to catch carp to pay the mortgage. I do think that money, and working in the carp world has dulled so many people’s enthusiasm. I defy anyone to pick up a magazine and point to someone, other than Tim (Paisley), who is as enthusiastic now as they were 30 years ago.”

How do you think that you are perceived now?
“Do you know, it’s really weird, I never knew how I was perceived. I knew that, in 1990s, I was big news or whatever and I can only think of my favourite rock band, Kiss. In the 1970s they were loved across America and round the world then, all of a sudden, they couldn’t sell concert tickets for anything. I remember the lead singer, Paul Stanley, saying that once he threw a plectrum into the crowd and it went over the whole lot of them, there were so few there! By the 2000s I started to think, “Do you know what? I’m not in the magazines as much as I used to be and I’m not fitting in with the current crowd at all. In fact, I remember two or three magazine editors saying to me, “Sorry Jules, you’re yesterday’s news, we’re not going to use you anymore and one of the firms that I was with at the time telling me that I had to be down South doing X,Y and Z. Now, I’ve always done it on my own terms, and I’ve lost columns and consultancies because I’ve done it on my own terms!

“There was a period from about 2000 until 2006 when I was pretty much unknown. I used to look on forums and people used to say, “Does Julian Cundiff still fish?” I was fishing just as much as ever, but I wasn’t in the magazines because I wasn’t seen as ‘what people want’. Then, Lewis Porter, I have to thank him here, got me involved in Crafty Carper, after I’d been out of it for a while, and he gave me the column, ‘Diary of an Everyday Carp Angler’. I wrote that and people started saying, “He’s still doing it!” It became, in my eyes, the best column in Crafty Carper, because it catered for what the readers did, then at the same sort of time, along came social media and I became ‘popular’ again!

“A bit like Kiss when they took their makeup off, nobody would bat an eyelid, then in 1996 they put the makeup back on and were selling tickets again. It’s not a question of doing it for other people, you must do it for yourself, because you’ll go out of fashion and come back into fashion. If I did it to be in fashion, I’d grow a beard, wear Vass waders and fish for bigger carp down South.”

“When I started carp fishing in the 1980s, the man was Kevin Maddocks. As you’ll have seen, I had the jumper, I had the jeans, I had the brace shot, I had the wellies… I couldn’t grow the ‘tache though!”

Were you hurt when you were no longer flavour of the month?
“I was hurt by the fact that some editors, who aren’t editors now, said, “Sorry mate, you’re old news.” It did hurt, but it’s not catching cancer, it’s not my mum dying; it’s simply people in carp fishing saying, “We don’t think that you’re flavour of the month.” One of the things that my dad said to me is that, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you’ll know what kind of a person you are. You might be popular as hell, but you’ll know if you’ve got a skeleton in the closet. You might be unpopular but if you know that you’re a good bloke, and you’re still giving back, it doesn’t matter what people think.”

It seems to me that much of your intensely moral stance on stuff that you’ve done, comes from your parents?
“Massively, but don’t get me wrong, I’ve been as bad as anybody and there are things that I should have done, or shouldn’t have done. But yes, my mum and dad are my two guiding lights. We lost my mum in 2011 and I’ve still got my dad, but those two people are the most important in my life. Anybody who turns to Facebook and sees me, there are pictures of my dad; he’s the man! My mum was a vicar, and she said, “You don’t have to be perfect, but you just need to do your best.”

A big moment for Jules: being inducted into the Carp-Talk Carp Fishing Hall Of Fame by Tim and Chris Ball. All that graft and sticking to his principles had paid off

As a self-confessed man-with-a-plan, how much of your carp fishing career has been curated? How much was the photo of the two girlfriends in underwear across the car bonnet playing to an image that you’d created?
“Always. Always. When I started carp fishing in the 1980s, the man was Kevin Maddocks. As you’ll have seen from the images, I had the jumper, I had the jeans, I had the brace shot, I had the wellies… I couldn’t grow the ‘tache though! Around ’87 I grew the hair a bit, I had a good job and girls started to become interested and I cultivated the image. I went to the carp shows and I made sure that I looked after myself. I didn’t want to be like the guys at the bar, smoking, drinking, not giving his attention to anybody else. I wanted to be me, so when I went to these shows, I cultivated Julian Cundiff. I didn’t want to be the second Kevin Maddocks, or the second Terry Hearn, or the second Dave Lane; I wanted to be the first Julian Cundiff.”

Is that because you knew that by doing that you were guaranteed longevity, rather than falling by the wayside?
“Absolutely. All my heroes weren’t offshoots of other people; Kevin Maddocks was his own man, Andy Little was his own man, the rock group Kiss were their own people, Guns and Roses were their own people. All the people I looked up to were strong individuals. I looked for longevity, which is why I didn’t go in for swapping consultancies, or jacking my job in to go and catch a big fish. It’s always been about longevity, which is why I am where I am now, I hope.”

With retirement on the horizon, it just means Jules will be doing more of what he likes

You knew that the image that you were cultivating was not going to be to everybody’s taste. How do you think that you were received, let’s say, on the big-fish circuit?
“I had letters saying, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ The most rude words you can think of to describe me! I wasn’t bothered! I went to the carp show and there was this clique that hung around that bar and would poo-poo me, and that wouldn’t give me the time of day. These are the same guys that within ten years were begging me to get them into Carpworld and Crafty. Do you know what? I did. There might even be people out there now who think, ‘Julian Cundiff, what has he ever caught?’ I really don’t care; I want to think, ‘Julian Cundiff, who has he helped?’ I might not be everybody’s cup of tea but you can’t be, because you become diluted. I’ll go back to Kiss again: they tried to be Bon Jovi; using Bon Jovi’s writer, using their producer, taking the makeup off. Still nobody liked them. They put their makeup back on, people liked them. You need to be true to yourself, yes, you have to move forward and I’m sure that some readers think, ‘Oh, same old Jules; Multi Rig, white pop-up, fish between 22lb and 35lb, boring’. I really don’t care.”

You’re coming up to retirement. Are you suddenly going to be doing three or four nights a week? Are you suddenly going to be going down south?
“I had a plan to retire at 50, obviously things didn’t work out, thanks to the financial crash and things like that, but this year, at 55, I can retire. I’ll just be doing more of what I like. It might just mean that an overnighter goes from 6pm-6am, to 2pm-11am. I will have trips down South to do 24 and 36hrs, I’ll take up all the options that I haven’t been able to. Do you know what the funny thing is, I will do exactly what I’m doing now and, touch wood, I’ll catch bigger fish. People will say, “What a great angler,” but it’ll be purely down to the fact that I’ll be on waters with bigger fish, with more time to do it and fewer things in the schedule to conflict. The reality is, the more you do it and the more you evolve, you catch more fish. For the first time though, I have no plan, I’m a man who is retiring without a plan!”

Does that scare you?
“Not at all. My life has been mapped out until the age of 55. People will say, “Are you going to edit magazines etc.?” The answer is that I have no plan!”

So you could do?
“I would love to be involved with magazines, doing what you’re doing Richard, going down to waters and doing things. I will never be sat in front of a computer three or four days a week, I’ll type the articles up etc., but when it comes to that kind of thing, I haven’t worked for 37 years and 8 months to sit in front of a computer ever again, on anything other than my own terms. I’m retiring on my own terms and I’m going to see out the rest of my life on my own terms.”