Police divers have found the bodies of a father and son who went missing after going magnet fishing.

Divers made the discovery in the River Calder, in the Cooper Bridge area of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, on Saturday evening.

Police were alerted at about 11.20am on Saturday by a passerby who noticed that personal belongings including clothing, a mobile phone, a camera and car keys had been by the riverside for about 50 minutes, a West Yorkshire police spokesman said.

Officers traced a car parked near the Pudsey area of Leeds where a woman confirmed that her 43-year-old husband and his 19-year-old son had gone fishing for discarded metal, a hobby involving trawling waterways for metal using a very strong magnet on a rope, at 6.15am.

An extensive search was carried out in the area but there was no trace of the two men and police divers were called in, he added. Divers found the bodies at 7.22pm.

“The family are aware and inquiries are ongoing into how they ended up in the water,” the spokesman said.

Earlier this month, a man from Gloucestershire was reported to have found a safe full of jewellery in the lake in a Cheltenham park after watching a programme about magnet fishing on television. The fisherman said he had bought the fishing magnet on the internet for £17.50.