An angler has set a new record for the heaviest weight of fish caught in a competition on the Erne.

Tom Pickering landed a staggering 109.5 kgs from the River Erne at Enniskillen in an event sponsored by Mahon’s Hotel in Irvinestown.

To put that in perspective, John Potters, from Lisbellaw, won the Waterways Ireland Classic the previous week with 49.450 kgs over three days and 15 hours of fishing Tom caught more than twice that amount in just five hours.

Eddie McGovern, tourism development officer with Fermanagh District Council, said: “It would certainly seem to be a record catch for the Erne.” Tom, from Doncaster in England, landed the enormous haul from the now famous Peg 1 on the Sligo Road section of the River Erne, opposite Enniskillen Castle.

However, Eddie reckons it wasn’t just the luck of the draw for pegs that produced the record.

“Tom Pickering would be a top angler,” explains Eddie. “He would be a world class angler. If somebody was going to be able to maximise the potential of that peg it would be him.” The massive bag of fish consisted of 58 bream and six roach/bream hybrids.

“It’s certainly a massive catch by any standards,” says Eddie. “The only way of catching more fish than that is in some sort of artificial fishery, of which there are many in England.” Artificial fisheries can be as basic as a hole in the ground, filled with water and packed so full of fish, like the proverbial sardines in a tin, that big catches are not unusual.

“It’s completely different to a wild fishery, which the Erne is,” explains Eddie.

Here the fish are dispersed across the 38,000 acres of the Upper and Lower Lough. It is usually only at this time of year, when they come together in vast shoals to breed, that such large catches are possible on the Erne.

That is why Fermanagh’s big match fishing festivals are all crammed into a five-week period in the spring, to coincide with that annual spawning migration.

Now that the fish have spawned and the shoals are beginning to disperse, so too are the match anglers. The last of the spring series of competitions, the Mal Scott Memorial, finished at the weekend.

However, Fermanagh’s tourist industry is hoping Tom’s record catch will bring record numbers of anglers to the county.