In most sports it can only happen in the rarest of cases that someone wins a competition without a perfect performance. This is even more true for carp angling competitions, where you obviously need some luck, as in many other parts of life, but only the very best can recognize the given situation and succeed consequently with a strategy. The Sírius Team has written itself into the history books of the IBCC in 2021, when they were able to win the world’s biggest carp angling competition under extremely exciting conditions.
– If we talk about luck, you do not seem to have any problems with it. Maybe only retrospectively could you find out, whether it was an advantage that you were fishing at exactly the same spot a few days before the start of the IBCC, where you were able to win one of the most prestigious competitions. How lucky are you generally at competitions at the draw?
The peg draw limits the possibilities of the teams and maximizes the possible results. You can only get to a Top 10 position from approximately a third of the pegs drawn, at least in our opinion, based on what we have seen in competitions so far. Our peg was in this section in the autumn, and we only had one team in our direct neighbourhood. We have been competing in this form since 2017 and we have had ever better sector results, but it was the first time that we have drawn a peg eligible for victory, so we had really high hopes straight from the draw on.
– It is not easy to prepare for such a competition, because right up until the draw you do not know which situation you will going to be in. How did you prepare yourself for the 2021 competition?
In the months before the IBCC we tried out the baits and tactics we thought they could be right on Lake Balaton. Every year we collect experiences regarding equipment and competition practices. The fact that we had been fishing in Balatonfenyves was good, it gave us confidence, because a month earlier we were able to catch 4 pieces of 20+ kg carps under competition conditions.
Looking back from now the two fishing experiences were completely different, if we would have insisted really crampy on our practices proven the month before, we would not have been able to win.
– Almost six months have passed since you could lift the IBCC trophy up as winners of the seventh edition. How do you think back at that particular moment, and how do you look differently at the competition itself?
All our competitor friends know how much a week of irregular sleep and sometimes nomadic circumstances take out of your system. And in addition to that, we got to know a new kind of feeling: the feeling of being hunted in the position of the leader, which also consumes a lot of energy. Even if we had the time to sleep, we were constantly thinking about how we could improve our performance even further. After all that the moment of our victory was a really cathartic one, a confirmation of all our talks and experiments on the shore, which are done by all competitors looking for the best method, the best baits, the best feeding tactics.
Now that six months have passed, the result is even more valuable. Looking back from now it seems like a dream how we took over the lead step by step and how we managed with a daily renewal to hold on to our position even in the very exciting final sprint.
– The news of such a victory spreads very quickly among carp anglers and I think that not only your direct competitors congratulated with you in the last period of time. How do you experience, how do you live the IBCC victory in your daily lives?It does surprise us day by day how many people follow this competition, how many stop us and congratulate with us. Strangers on the street, the lady in the shop, the guy at the petrol station. The Hungarians, the people living at Lake Balaton feel as if this is their success too and this is an especially good feeling.
– So far no one has ever managed to defend the title and this means there will be some kind of psychological pressure on you before the 2022 competition.
The pressure is there, all competitions begin the same way, we want to have the best possible draw, preferably not sit in between other teams and then we have to catch the first fish and then we have to look for the sector results. But one thing is for sure, we always want to win the competition! And even if no one has managed to win it twice, we will try all the same!