I wonder what you all will be doing in two days time when the river season opens.

But I guess not much different. The once Glorious 16th doesn’t have much of a ring to it these days, does it?

You sea anglers know no closed season, nor do most still water trout fishers. Even coarse anglers spend the vast majority of their time on the stills too, so probably for 95pc of Norfolk fisher people the date means little or nothing. Two years ago I spent opening day on the Bure at Woodbastwick and saw a predator man afloat as light was breaking and a gentleman catching a large perch or two, but that was about the sum total of angling effort that I myself witnessed. True, next day, there was a match I walked past on the Thurne, but there were more people on Martham Pits than taking part on the river.

Why? When we were kids river fishing was the acme of our sport, but hardly today. In part, this has to be because we have seen the numbers of river fish decline drastically since the 1950s and 1960s with this century seeing a complete collapse on certain catchments. Combine this environmental tragedy with the growth of commercial fisheries and the number of easily-caught stocked trout and carp that they hold and you can begin to see the reasons for a shift of interest.

Indeed, so great has been the readjustment of focus, it’s probably also true to say that very few anglers under the age of 50 have much idea how to fish a river as a result. There are obvious, talented exceptions to this generalisation, but I’d hazard a guess and write that not a great many 20-year-olds know how to trot with a centre pin. River fishing therefore has become a daunting prospect and the drift towards well stocked still waters becomes a stampede.

Last week, I travelled up to the famed Driffield Beck in Yorkshire. I met the legendary Dave Southall, who volunteered to show me the mysteries of Japanese Tenkara fishing, which for those of you who don’t know, involves fly fishing with a fixed line and no reel.

The concept is that you can place a fly on or in the water light as thistledown and create the most minimal disturbance, even on a river clear as gin. Everything about the approach is a mixture of elegance and practicality, delicacy and efficiency. Dave caught trout on a day when nothing but Tenkara would have worked, so spooked were the fish in broilingly bright conditions. Even with this magical method, Dave still had to go down to gnat imitations tied on a size 26! I bet if you are my age you have trouble with a size 18 and Dave is actually my senior by a few years... told you this was all about magic!

Dave made a huge point of stalking and targeting only wild fish in the Beck, in stocked ones he had no interest, he said. I came away impressed, but thinking his approach was not far removed from mine, in Norfolk for roach on the Wensum. In summer, especially, I long ago learned that it was useless to sit in one place and expect the scattered and tiny shoals to come to you. Instead, you had to travel feather light and walk endlessly until you found the fish.

All I take today is a rod, reel, size 16 hooks, a few small shot, a tub of corn and a net. Polaroids are essential and a bright day helpful and I am happy to walk anything up to five miles or more until roach are located. Then a single grain of corn weighted with a no.6 shot is allowed to drift through the water column down towards the fish. There’s no float, there’s no lead, there’s no feeder, there’s no splash and if the fish haven’t seen me, I’ll catch one. The whole day will be exhausting but exhilarating, if all goes as it should, and I like to think this is Tenkara gone coarse.

I don’t want to make myself out as some latter day prophet and there are, and recently have been, plenty of anglers who still relish true, wild river fishing this century, many of whom fish or did fish as members of the Norfolk Flyfishers’ Club. Dennis, Roger, Graham, Robbie, the two Jimmys - the list goes on. But some have passed and none of us left is getting younger. I fear that not only will river skills soon be lost forever, but more importantly, so will that desire to protect wild river fish and fisheries. Nowadays, it is largely salmon and trout anglers who fight for rivers with coarse anglers far behind in the battle. Soon, coarse anglers will fail to show up altogether and June 16 will be a day unremarked by everyone.