Drennan-backed Lee Klimczuk has won the 2015 Muckno Mania Angling Festival in Ireland after five convincing days fishing.

Cambridgeshire-based Lee has a great record on the Irish festival circuit and recorded five impressive weights on Lough Muckno for a 61.21kg total.

He was the race leader by Day Three and managed to hold onto pole position right to the end, sealing victory with a section-winning 14.62kg from White Island on the last day. That helped to push him more than 6kg ahead of the chasing pack, winning himself around £3,500 in the process.

“I caught a bit of everything all week but roach and hybrids were the main target, plus perch and the odd bream,” Lee explained. “You had to keep swapping lines to keep the fish coming, so I probably spent about a day and half of the festival on the feeder and the rest of the time on the pole. I discovered the key this year was to try and find 7ft of water on the pole line, sometimes just 6m out. Unusually for Ireland, I also found that feeding heavily with maggots was much better than casters this year.

“Another key was to fish quite a heavy and crude pole rig, often with a double bulk. A teardrop-shaped 1g G-Tip 3 float helped to bomb the rig through the smaller fish and really helped to pick out the better ones underneath.”

Lee added, “I suppose the hardest part of the entire festival was having to share my winnings with traveling partner Mark Pollard!”

Result
1st L Klimczuk 61.21kg
2nd W VD Helm 54.92kg
3rd P Horbinski 53.0kg
4th R O’ Sullivan 52.89kg
5th K Johnson 52.15kg