FeederMasters 2019 Final report
Twelve grand payout to Preston man
When a match organiser wins his own event there’s often a lighthearted cry of ‘fix’ as the results are read out.
nothing could be further from the truth, though, after this year’s preston innovations feeder masters final when england man lee Kerry was crowned champion.
not content with co-running the whole competition with mick Vials, preston innovations backed feeder international lee then nipped off to win at upper Tamar lakes, recording a twoday weight aggregate of 68-12-0 to win the £12,000 first prize – just over 2lb clear of leigh Tackle & Bait’s danny wilson. lee addy pocketed third place on 64-12-0.
That earned those men £4,000 and £2,500 respectively in a payout that went all the way down to 20th spot in what all competitors agreed was one of the best matches of recent times. only one angler recorded less than 10lb from the 120 weigh-ins over the weekend.
The match was moved from Bough Beech reservoir to south west water Tamar, a decision proved to have been the right one as small skimmers and roach fed for all. a minimum of 25lb was needed on day one to leave you in the hunt on day two but even then surprises did happen. michael Buchwalder had 15-0-0 on day one, then bagged 39-0-0 on sunday to get himself into the top 10!
for winner lee, though, the victory will have been all the sweeter as feedermasters is an event he helped to create and become established. he rates it as the biggest event he has ever won, which is saying something given he’s taken the parkdean masters and world irish pairs crowns in a glittering career.
“for me, feedermasters has become the feeder event to win, whether i’m fishing it or not. i’ve sacrificed a lot of other types of fishing to concentrate on feeder and international work, so this is why feeder masters means so much to me,” lee said.
“winning it after playing such a big part in getting it off the ground makes things that bit more special, but until the wednesday before the final i’d never even fished Tamar. The little dabble i did have told me what a great venue the lake was going to be. i also felt with 60 anglers on it that the chance of really big weights would be small– it would be a far more level playing field. i honestly couldn’t wait to get cracking!”
In his own words, here’s how Lee took on two very different Tamar pegs to be crowned FeederMasters champion for 2019…
DAY ONE DEVON BANK PEG 32 – 32-4-0
This peg was in an area where I felt I could catch skimmers, so I fished a line at 35m with a cage window feeder packed with chopped worm and caster and two dead red maggots on a size 12 N30 hook. It wasn’t hectic fishing, more a case of picking skimmers off steadily, and I finished with 70 fish for my weight, which was a good start. They seemed to go around three to the pound.
It’s 20ft deep on this peg and I used braid straight through as bites were quite shy, with a 50cm hooklink of 0.16mm. It’s worth mentioning the groundbait here. The Tamar skimmers like a bit of fishmeal so I went for a 50/50 mix of Sonubaits Thatchers and Black F1. I didn’t use a big baiting feeder at the start, preferring to build the peg using a large cage window and then dropping down to a medium once I started catching.
DAY TWO CORNWALL BANK PEG 2 – 36-8-0
I was going to be on the Cornwall bank for day two, so I looked at the weight boards from Saturday and identified pegs 1-15 for a lot of roach or 26-29 for skimmers. Pulling out peg 2 would do nicely, and at least it made my mind up to fish for roach all day.
It’s only around 6ft deep here and to catch 30lb of roach, what I’d need to stand any chance of doing well, I had to fish at short range so I went down one hole 8m out on an underarm cast and it turned out to be fishing very similar to that in Ireland.
That meant not waiting long between casts and fishing a big hook, effectively a fish race with 200-plus roach required.
What was odd was that I would have spells of catching 20 roach in 15 minutes and then only five fish in the next quarter of an hour, but there were always enough there to keep putting something in the net.
In terms of tactics I once again went for braid straight through to a size 12 N30 hook with single dead maggot or a piece of worm on a window cage feeder. I used more groundbait and a different mix of Sonubaits Black Roach for a very hempy feed holding casters and just a little chopped worm. It was a case of ‘cast, count to 30 seconds, then wind in and repeat’. The aim was to get a bite within that 30 count – any longer than that and you were wasting time.
THE WEIGH-IN
To put 36-8-0 on the scales was more than I’d hoped for and gave me 68-12-0 overall. But with so many good anglers fishing and so many fish to catch, it was more than possible that my total could be overtaken and in the end – it was very close! Just 4lb covered Adam Wakelin in fourth to me in first, and 5lb covered 12th place down to 20th. I can assure everyone that we triple-checked the results to make totally sure! Result: 1 L Kerry, Preston Innovations, 68-12-0;
2 D Wilson, Leigh Tackle & Bait, 66-6-0;
3 L Addy, Drennan NW, 64-12-0; 4 A Wakelin, Ringer Baits, 64-2-0; 5 J Dent, MAP/Sensas, 61-8-0; 6 M Murdoch, Cresta/Gamakatsu, 57-2-0; 7 D Barlow, Drennan/Mainline Match, 56-12-0;
8 D Cox, Garbolino/Mainline Match, 56-8-0; 9 A Firth, Sonubaits, 55-12-0; 10 M Buchwalder, Preston Innovations, 55-6-0.