Evidence of the river's water quality

Sir, — My son Oscar, 21, caught these two beautiful fish on the Thames near the River & Rowing Museum in Henley two weeks ago.

One was an amazing 14lb carp (a good size for a wild river carp). It had beautiful markings.

Apparently it put up quite a fight and the onlookers were entertained for quite a while.

Oscar says that river carp are solid muscle and very strong, so are always fun to catch whereas the carp you catch in lakes tend to be quite fat and sluggish.

He wasn’t fishing with heavy duty equipment, so had to play the fish very gently and slowly, or it would have got away. The second fish was a beautiful brown trout weighing 2lb.

This shows we have excellent water quality in the Thames around this area as brown trout like clean water.

Both fish were returned safely and gently back into the Thames.

Oscar has been fishing since he was four years old. He was lucky to finish work early that day so decided to treat himself to an afternoon’s fishing.

He also caught a lovely 1lb chub. — Yours faithfully,

Sarah Pye

Henley