With approaching 40 years of angling experience under my belt, perhaps I'm becoming a little more circumspect in my dotage.

With time so often at a premium, it's not often I can spare a few hours by the river without a fishing rod in hand, or a strimmer if I'm on one of our working parties tackling the dreaded balsam!

But I recently found myself on a familiar beat at Treffgarne Bridge with an altogether more circumspect purpose. I was being trained by Pembrokeshire Rivers Trust in the dark art of environmental monitoring. I say 'dark art' because in order for it to be of any scientific use, you quickly learn that you have be very subjective and follow a tight set of rules for reporting.

About 30 years ago I began what turned out to be a rather eclectic career at Midland Bank in Haverfordwest. As a fresh-faced teenager, who had never even visited north Pembrokeshire before, I was fortunate to find lodgings with a generous local, whose past-time was game fishing. He took pity on his young lodger, and hosted regular expeditions along PAA waters.

The dot in the water off the second promontory is me, photographed by my father during a recent fishing trip. My first holiday in 4 or 5 years: a couple of days fishing in Snowdonia, hosted by the wonderful ‘Tynycornel Hotel’ on Tal Y Llyn lake.

Having been lucky enough to travel the world and being yet luckier to live somewhere that hard-working people with precious little time off want to spend their holidays, travelling for me these days is a very low priority. But drifting a boat among the small olives and sedges, on a lovely lake, in stunning scenery can almost make the fishing a secondary thing. Almost.