Yesterday evening my son Leo and I went off to the river to see if we might be able to catch a carp. Leo has accepted an offer to study Management at the University of York and will be off within a month. He may well join a fly fishing club if the university has one. If not there is always squash, the gym, or the swimming club (he is eyeing up the University´s 50m breast stroke record and is our school´s record holder for this distance.) Personally, I would advise him to sing in a band. He has a great voice. Girls always seem to have the hots for the lead singers of bands. If I were young and single and was not the owner of a voice box like that of a frog in a swamp I know what I would do!

The river is thin now and the pools are quite shallow. The fish are difficult to approach unless they are preoccupied with feeding. The barbel are now so spooky that we were really pinning our hopes on carp. But yesterday the carp were wary too and Leo only had one or two fish he could approach and none of them feeding with such intent that they were likely to take. In the end we caught nothing.

Leo is a skillful fisherman. He casts well, moves quietly and his eyes are sharp. The simple truth is that in a river which is as shallow as it has now become, the fishing can be very difficult unless the fish are really knuckling down to feed and the mud clouds they create offer a little cover for you to sneak up. On some evenings the fish will feed with this kind of intensity, on others they will not. Sometimes you catch them and sometimes you don´t. Don´t worry about it. C´est la vie.

On the way to and from the car we saw herons, black winged stilts and a big raptor that may well have been a booted eagle or maybe a buzzard and, driving home, we came across a couple of red necked nightjars crouched against the dirt track. One of these allowed us to approach so closely it became obscured finally by the car´s bonnet as we slowly edged up to it. Only then did it take to the wing.

Leo and I probably won´t have too many more chances to fish before he is off to York but I would hope he has a chance to catch at least one of the river´s carp before he goes.

We are very proud of him and will miss greatly when he has gone.

There were a couple of fish in this shallow pool but they had no intentions of becoming better acquainted with us.

There were a couple of fish in this shallow pool but they had no intentions of becoming better acquainted with us.

Don´t worry. Fishing can be like this!

Don´t worry. Fishing can be like this!