The Lough Ree International Pike Festival returns for its fifth year and will take place  this year, we are now taking entries and the forms are attached or can be downloaded at http://www.activeirishangling.com or on http://www.athlone.ie . The competition has been sponsored by Failte Ireland for the last four years but as the term of their sponsorship has now come to an end this year’s first prize of €1000 will be sponsored by Athlone Town Council.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of this years competition I would like to acknowledge the contribution that has been made over the last few years in getting this competition off the ground and up and running and in particular I would like to thank Mark Rowlette, Marie McCormick, Michael Brady, Colm Breheny and Michael Fitzsimons all from Failte Ireland and Martin McEnroe. There is one person who above all others who should be thanked and that is Dave Houghton as without his tireless enthusiasm and dedication this competition would not be what it is today so a big thank you to Dave for all his work.
So what does that all mean in terms of running the competition, well it will be Eamon Cunningham along with a small but dedicated committee who will be running this years competition but they have been well tutored over the years by Dave Houghton so everything should run as it did before and with the support and good wishes of all the anglers we will have another excellent event. As a consequence of the above there are some small changes to how the event will operate and I have detailed these here.

This pike festival is unique in that prizes are awarded based on the length of the pike rather than the weight and anglers are given a measuring board on which they must place their catch, photograph it, return the fish to the water as quickly as possible and hand in the photo at the end of the day for judging.
The entry fee for this years competition will be €110 per angler for three days of quality pike fishing and of that fee €100 goes into the prize fund while €10 goes to pay for administration and insurance and at the end of the competition any excess in the administration fund will be donated to the Lough Ree R.N.L.I. The competition is a non profit making event.

With the competition limited to 80 boats which is approximately 160 anglers this will give a total prize fund of approximately €17,000 to be won over the three days. There will be thirteen cash prizes awarded at the end of each day and the angler who catches the single longest fish over the three days will win the €1000 which is sponsored by Athlone Town Council in addition to their daily prize. The daily prizes are based on entries and going on last year’s prizes the daily winner will take home €1000 and this means that the overall winner could walk away with €2000!!!

Coosan Point, Lough Ree
Coosan Point, Lough Ree

Please note that in a change to previous years the number of prizes that can be won on a daily basis will be restricted by the number of anglers in the boat. For example if there are two anglers in the boat then that boat may only win two prizes each day and similarly if there are three anglers in the boat then that boat may only win three prizes each day.

The very popular World Cup event also takes place and is awarded to the boat which catches the longest length of pike over the three days. This is worked out by adding together the longest fish caught each day in the boat to determine the overall length and the winner will receive the beautiful silver World Cup along with €1000 for their efforts.

One other small change to the rules is that photographs must be in jpg or jpeg format, this should not be a problem as all cameras are automatically set to take photographs in this format anyway

Further details along with entry forms, rules and provisional prize list can be found on http://www.activeirishangling.com or on http://www.athlone.ie or contact Eamon Cunningham at [email protected] or on 087 2340815