The England Feeder Team have proven their skills at a recent friendly match with a host of individual and team successes.
With the World Feeder Championships fast approaching an International Friendly match was organised to give the teams from all over the world a chance to fish the chosen venue and scope out the competition.
England had two teams entered and with Former World Champion and Preston Innovations backed angler, Tommy Pickering as England Feeder Team Manager, the hope of bringing back a medal was high. Preston Innovations backed Adam Wakelin tells us more: “There were 20 teams of five anglers from all over the world that arrived at the rowing course at Ghent for the match. Amongst them some of the best feeder anglers in the world.” 
After two days of hard fishing the point’s scores were looking good. England A Team had managed to top the leaderboard, with England B Team close behind in second. If this wasn’t enough there were three England internationals on the individual podium; Steve Ringer taking top spot, Adam Wakelin in second and Kieron Rich in third.
Here’s 2nd placed Adam Wakelin’s account of the match: “On the first day, Saturday 14th, I was on Peg A4. The Team had decided to fish for the Bream. I used a Preston Innovations 11ft 6ins Absolute Super Feeder rod coupled with a PC-R 5000 reel. I used a simple running feeder rig comprising an Open-Ended Feeder, 2ft hooklink of 0.128mm Reflo Xceed mono and a PR344 hook.  A good, comfortable distance to fish with this feeder setup was a 40 reel turns. The five hour match would really test each angler.
“I had a biteless first hour; persisting with the same line the second hour produced three bream. In the following hours of the match I added seven more bream to give total of 10 and weighed in with 11kg 500g. The fish fell to a worm hookbait and Tommy’s top secret Groundbait mix!” laughs Adam. “I managed to catch enough for third in my section, a respectable result from this peg, and valuable team points.”

“Day two saw us decide to all fish with the same feeder line as the previous day due to an excellent day all round. This made rig choice very simple – exactly the same as yesterday. Again Tommy’s Top Secret Groundbait mix and worm hookbaits did the business for me on Peg B2. I had four bream in the first two hours of the match and then no bites for the next two hours.
All of a sudden in half an hour Adam managed four fish in four casts, giving him a total of eight bream and weighing in with 10kg 820g, enough to top his section! This left Adam on four points and second overall in the competition; also putting the England B team into Second place.
Team Manager Tommy Pickering was understandably delighted: “This was a massive result and hopefully one that can be replicated in the World Feeder Champs later on this year.
“I’m proud of the guys. They all fished really well and it shows how we’re developing as a team.”