Predatortour is currently the biggest spinning competition in Europe. A huge number of teams, a huge body of water, and huge fish. While I always hoped to win, realistically I think that out of all the competitions I take part in, Predatortour is probably the one where my chances of victory are the lowest. Although the World Predator Classic is technically more difficult, it has a smaller number of crews, and the format suits my fishing style better. However, this year Richard and I felt exceptionally strong, and quietly thoughts of a good result started to appear. The thing is, those thoughts probably always appear, and the fish verify everything. That’s exactly how it was during practice…

We had five days to get to know the water and choose the right tactics. On the first day, we figured out the perch and zander. While we generally never have problems with zander, perch have sometimes been an issue for us. This time, wherever we went, we caught them. Shallow, deep — it didn’t matter. That’s why we dedicated the remaining days to pike, and that’s where the serious problems began.

We weren’t finding them in open water, there were exceptionally few of them on structures, and they seemed to be very well camouflaged, so we focused on classic shallow fishing in the grass.

The results were, to put it mildly, very average. Apart from one very special fish, which I’ll dedicate a separate post to, we caught few pike and no real specimens. On top of that, the first day of the competition was expected to be very windy, and we knew that most of my good spots would be excluded from fishing.

On the first day, we decided not to overthink it and fished the weed beds that we could reach relatively safely. And that’s exactly where the wind blew in our favour — quite quickly I landed a 112 cm fish, and shortly after improved with a 101 cm. As if that wasn’t enough, we were very close to also landing a 115+ fish. Unfortunately, after that fish everything went quiet, and until the end of the day we didn’t get another pike bite. We only managed to add a 73 cm zander during a short break from the heavy pike grind. Either way, it was a very good foundation for the following days.

The plan for the second day was very simple: keep fishing for pike in the shallows, and if we completed the quota, go for perch. If we managed to catch the perch quota, we would move on to what we like most — zander fishing. Surprisingly, everything went according to plan. First, we completed the pike with a 70 cm fish, and after several dozen minutes we upgraded it to 94 cm. We weren’t fully satisfied with that size, but we couldn’t waste more time on them, so we went for perch.

With the stripies, it went more or less as we expected — they put up resistance 🙂 A few spots were empty, and we had to painstakingly scratch all the fish out of a heavily pressured area. However, fish of 42, 47, and 49 cm gave us an average of 46, which was good enough to switch to zander.

We had just over an hour left, so we weren’t expecting fireworks, and yet it went better than I expected. We caught fish of 74, 77, and 80 cm. That put us in first place after two days, with quite a big lead.

The score we had would have been enough to win the year before, but looking through the cards of other competitors, I felt that there were a few teams who, if they found big pike, could overtake us. The plan for day three was simple: upgrade one pike and two zander. We managed it only halfway.

For a change, we started with zander and upgraded our smallest fish to 76 cm. Then we moved on to pike, and for 90 minutes we didn’t get a bite. So we went back to zander, but unfortunately the only fish we caught were in the 70–75 cm range. For a moment, we tried to upgrade the 42 cm perch, but unfortunately we only had one bite.

In the meantime, one hour before the end, we were overtaken by three points by a team that had caught beautiful pike. Still, I felt it wasn’t over yet and that we still had a chance for a big zander or perch. We decided on zander, because that’s where we feel strongest.

Unfortunately, we slightly missed their feeding window, and for a very long time we couldn’t find any sensible fish. Suddenly, 20 minutes before the end, Richard and I both spotted a big fish. Because of the strong wind, we decided that I would cast to that one. I felt a bit like I was taking a penalty in the World Cup final 🙂 The first cast was OK, but the fish ignored the lure. I decided not to change the bait and to try once more. This time the zander moved, but not very aggressively. It wasn’t a good sign, but for some reason I felt it would take — and I wasn’t wrong.

The fight was extremely emotional, not because of the fish’s fighting power, because it was basically ripped out of the water, but because of the weight of the points. I knew that if it landed in the net, we would not give up the victory.

There was no shortage of shouts of joy. Usually I’m not a very emotional person, but here I allowed myself to let go a little 🙂 Good thing the camera was only streaming live video, without sound 🙂

The zander measured 84 cm and gave us nearly a five-point lead. The remaining 20 minutes were some of the longest of my life, but fortunately nothing else happened, and our victory became a fact!