This report from the organisers of the Lough Derg Predator Challenge 2025: 

On Sunday 8th of June, after a postponement in May due to terrible weather, the Lough Derg Predator Challenge 2025 finally took place and twenty five battle hardened fishing teams took to the water to challenge for the title.

The aim was to catch all three predatory species – Pike, Perch and Trout – to be able to “battle” for the prizes. The weather looked absolutely perfect on Sunday morning – overcast with some wind (too much for some at times) and a few light showers – perfect for fishing for the three sought after species and nothing so bad that would stop good anglers from fishing!

Looking towards Scarriff, Lough Derg
Scarriff Bay, Lough Derg
The competition started at 9am and not long after the first fish was landed (only took 9 minutes to catch first fish of the day!). Fishing continued till 4:50pm (the scoring app closed at 5pm and all anglers had to be back at the meeting point to bring back measuring board and hi-viz jacket). After all pictures and videos had been checked, rechecked and validated, we had the leaderboard for this year’s Lough Derg Predator Challenge!
  • First Place – Team Catch&Release 385cm (longest 3 fish+bonus ) Trophies + cash prize
  • Second Place – Team Tajnos Agentos 379cm (longest 3 fish+bonus) Trophies+ cash prize
  • Third Place – Team IrishfishingTours 368cm (longest 3 fish+bonus) Trophies + cash prize

This year one of our sponsors has asked us to award the longest Trout in the competition

  • Longest Trout – Team TWO4FISHING 45cm Trout

We also had some sponsorship from some fabulous lures handcrafters, a big UK company and a Fishing Tackle shop from Athlone, this prize went to

  • 4th Place – Team TWO4FISHING voucher for Jurassic Lures – Handmade Quality to be spent on his website https://tkart.eu/en/
  • 8th and 9th Place – Team EC Flash Tails and Team Wildhunter – Vouchers from PAN hand made LURES https://panlures.com/

Other prizes included:

Also – a special prize was handed to the youngest angler registered for this competition, fishing with his father – a Kingfisher a set of lures from WET-NETS.IE.

Well done to everyone who took part in this competition.

Well done to top 3 and and the framers.