Dean Barlow reports back from the Sky Sports Tight Lines Young Angler Day, where he and a host of star names were joined on the bank by some very lucky competition winners.
The Tight Lines Young Angler competition day is always one that I look forward to and always make sure I am available for. Backed by Drennan International, each year the monthly winners of the competition get to spend the day with an international angler at the brilliant Barston Lakes near Birmingham.
This year I had the pleasure of teaching 15-year-old Alex Park, who was accompanied by his dad, Andy. After a brief chat to Alex to see what methods he fancied, he decided he wanted to fish the pole, so we rigged up my Acolyte at about 10 metres. I showed Alex how to plumb the depth and seeing that we was after skimmers and bream we decided fishing about four inches overdepth was about right.
Baitwise, I showed Alex how to prepare pellets and all our bait we was going to use. 
We started by cupping in four balls of Bait-Tech Special G laced with micro pellets and some corn. Gingerly and with some help Alex shipped out the pole and laid the rig in the water. Almost immediately the double maggot bait was snapped up by a greedy skimmer – a great start for us!
The skimmers then came steadily along plus the odd big roach. A switch to corn on the hook was unbelievable, as the fish got much bigger as bream to 3lb graced the net at regular intervals along with a 2lb hybrid, which was a personal best for Alex!
I was really impressed how Alex was now using the pole without any help from me. I did notice however that dad Andy was looking like he wanted a go himself, so we let him have a go as we set a Method feeder rod up to try and catch a bonus fish.
In the meantime, Andy was like a kid himself, catching skimmer after skimmer so we had to eventually evict him off the seatbox!
We cast the Method feeder out and we had two big F1s and and some more bream. By this time, it was sadly time to pack up.
As we pulled the keepnet out Alex’s face was a picture. He couldn’t believe how many he had caught. I estimate he had over 45lb of fish!
As I was packing the tackle away Andy came up to me and said, “Alex just told me this is the SECOND best day of his life!” I said, “Oh, what was his first?” to which Andy replied, ”It was when he got Lionel Messi in his football cards!” Well, it’s not every day you come second to the world’s best footballer!
As the cars departed, all of the kids had huge smiles on their faces, which really puts the icing on the cake for everyone who took part.
Tight lines!