After eight rounds of qualifiers up and down the country, the twenty four golden ticket winners took to their pegs on loughs Sillan and Skeagh over the weekend to decide who would be Ireland’s FeederKing for 2025. There was also a practice match on Friday, where eighteen of the finalists got to sharpen their hooks ahead of the finale.
And on to the main event, where Tony Hopkins put in a masterful display on day one, with 19.975kg of mostly big roach on peg 4 to win on the Deeps. Mariusz Killan had another 19kg, a brilliant display, this time with skimmers to weigh 19.250kg from peg 6. Tony Green was 3rd Overall with an all roach catch to weigh 16.225kg from peg 12.
Neil Mazurick continued his good form of late to win Skeagh with 8.150 kg of small skimmers from peg 13. 2nd overall was Damien Foltyn who had 7.650kg of skimmers and hybrids on peg 20, this was closely followed by Brenton Sweeney who had 7.625kg on peg 19.
Day two saw some better weights on Skeagh, with the top three weights all above 8kgs – with Pavel Tkachenko on 8.525kg (peg 23), Paul Leese on 8.175kg (peg 13) and Charlie Richards on 8.125kg (peg 15). Lough Sillan didn’t reproduce the good weights from day one, with none of the top three managing over 17kg. They were Darren Fairhurst with 17.000kg from peg 11, Brenton Sweeney with 13.350kg from peg 5 and Robertas Zilaitis with 11.500kg from peg 3.
After netting 19.975kg on day one, Tony Hopkins finished strongly with 7.900kg from Skeagh on day two to take the Ireland’s FeederKing title for 2025 with 27.875kg overall. Mariusz Killan came in second on 26.125 with Paul Leese third on 23.975kg.
Before the main event was the practice day on Friday, where the organisers held two separate matches, one on each lake.
On Lough Sillan’s Deeps, it was last year’s FeederKing champ, Charlie Richards, who won the with a weight of 15.959kg of roach, skimmers and hybrids off peg 9. Pavel Tkachenko, who is improving each match he fishes, had a mixed bag of fish for 13.175kg of peg 4 to finish 2nd. Philip Jackson continued his fine form of late with a nice bag of roach and skimmers to weigh 12.875kg to come 3rd Overall from peg 2.
Tony Hopkins pre-empted his FeederKing final win with a fine net of roach skimmers and hybrids to weigh 11.850kg and win Skeagh from peg 23. Ireland feeder boss Brenton Sweeney caught skimmers on peg 15 to weigh 9.800kg to come 2nd overall. Charlie Richards wasn’t the only Richards to do well today, his dad Nick caught 9.050kg of skimmers, hybrids and roach on peg 14 to come 3rd Overall.
And that’s a wrap for the 2025 series – well done to all involved!
