Prior to the establishment of Southern Fishing News, the publisher and editor, Ron McDonald, got involved in the bass fishing industry while still on active duty with the Army as a helicopter pilot. A trip from Ft. 📷Rucker, AL to B.A.S.S. headquarters in Montgomery, AL to meet with longtime editor Bob Cobb. Cobb’s review of some preliminary cartoon drawings led to the publication of “Billy Bass & Charlie Carp” cartoons in Bassmaster Magazine. Later, the former National Bass fishing organization’s magazine published McDonald’s story and cartoon series called “Anheuser Ambush”.
The present day Southern Fishing News has roots in the “Southern Fishing” television show in the late 70’s.📷
The show was broadcast from a local TV station based in Florence, AL. Southern Fishing’s television show ran for two years, first as a thirty minute production once a week, then as a nightly part of the station’s news broadcast five nights a week.
The follow-up to the television show was the establishment of a large Southern Fishing website featuring stories, fishing artwork, photos, tournament schedules tournament results, product news, lure field tests, cartoons and more.
That site was southern-fishing.com. The website morphed into an online digital publication over time with email notices sent to anglers in the Southern Fishing database when new stories or pages were added to the digital publication.
📷The next incarnation of Southern Fishing was in the form of a tabloid, printed monthly publication. The print newspaper was distributed across north Alabama and was published for several years. However, the reduction of available time lead to a suspension of producing the print publication and a general absence of Southern Fishing for several years from the bass fishing scene in the greater north Alabama area.
Re-entry into the world of bass fishing news publishing came in the form of email news to the Southern Fishing database of anglers. That list, and the readership, has grown to over 2000 addresses.
The Email News was the sole outlet of Southern Fishing for several years.
Southern Fishing also created and sponsored popular “All Star Bassin’ Team” and “Top Rod” tournament competition for area anglers.
Next was a leap into the social networking world with the addition of a Southern Fishing page. Our page (now two pages) is a great outlet for story links to our website, announcements, news, photos and a partner for our email news.
The “News” part of Southern Fishing was added when the new website was established as 📷southernfishingnews.com.
Not least is our Twitter account, @southfishnews, where we send out headlines and story links about material on our website, LinkedIn and Google+ pages. A fairly recent addition to our news distribution social sites is Printerrest. Believe it or not, there is a LOT of good fishing related information there.
We can’t leave out our online Photo Album and You Tube videos. Also in the mix are the Student Angler Series classes for high school bass clubs.
So from “Billy Bass & Charlie Carp”, we now have a Southern Fishing News website, Southern Fishing News email news/updates, Southern Fishing pages, LinkedIn, Google+ pages, Twitter, online Photo Albums, You Tube and our Student Angler Series.
The synergy created by these points of distribution is available to sponsors for fishing product news, stories, news releases, photos and videos.
Included here is our 2017 Media Kit for prospective sponsors to view or download and read. SFN Media Kit
