This was yet another time at the World Predator Classic, and once again we were surprised by so many things 🙂 Probably that’s why we keep coming back every year. Never a dull moment. This time I’ll split the report into sections – from the negative to the most positive, so we can end on a good note.

Thefts
The biggest negative of this year’s edition was… the repeated thefts from the competitors. I already described these situations on Facebook, but I’ll briefly mention them here as well. Many boats were looted not just once, but twice within a few days. A huge oversight on the part of the marina and the organizers. Tons of rods, lures, and also fishing electronics were stolen. Unfortunately, that’s not all. Several trailers with accessories, such as electric winches, were also robbed.
A massacre! It makes you not want to go back to the Netherlands because of this.

Weather
This is becoming a tradition. For many years now, no matter what the weather is like before the competition or at what time of year the WPC takes place, as soon as the event begins there are gales, rains, and storms. A true test for hardcore anglers 🙂

Fishing
Up until now, my experiences with fishing in the Netherlands have always been extremely positive. This trip was different. Basically, only the pike were really active for us. Unfortunately, we didn’t find perch and caught only a few scattered ones. And the biggest personal surprise – I struggled with zander. They had never been a problem before, but this year they were flipping us the middle finger more often than not.
So we came back from the Netherlands not quite satisfied with our catches.

Result
Here I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, we had much higher expectations, especially after last year’s good result. On the other hand, since we didn’t crack the code on perch during training, we knew we had no chance at a top score. We fought and hoped for a miracle. It didn’t happen. So 24th place out of over 100 teams is nothing to be ashamed of but not glorious either 🙂
However, in the team classification (together with Adam Grabowski and Adam Konowrocki), we took 5th place out of 30 teams and were quite close to the podium, even to winning. In fact, two fish that got off at the boat on the last day (for us a perch 40+ cm, for the Adams a zander 80+ cm) would probably have given us 2nd place.
Full results are available here: https://www.worldpredatorclassic.com/wpc-2025-leaderboard-live/

Atmosphere
This part was great, and we had a lot of fun. As always, fantastic companions Bartosz and Radek were with us in the house. Richard turned out to be a great boat partner, even though he joined as a last-minute substitute and we had never fished together before. My dad, as always, proved he’s the best fishing buddy. I think we created a great team with Adam and Adam.
On top of that, it was great to meet again with fellow anglers: Andrzej, Wiktor, Piotr x 2, Tomasz, Mariusz, Matt, Alan and Andy.