Saturday 31st October: Working this weekend, as I'm on trap duty. Rain forecast for tomorrow, so getting the traps ready for possible flooding. Not much caught today, another handful of immatures at the Kirkburn and one male of 29cms at Tweedsmuir, not a usual size for the fish there, they're usually bigger. A male too, so rather late as the males go up first and the others are up well before him. Caught the first kelted trout coming down, a male and female. Generally, these fish spend between 1 and 2 weeks up the burn before returning back downstream. At one trap or another most of the daylight, but did see the last half-hour of Selkirk vs Heriots, which Selkirk won convincingly 30 -12, from 15-12 when I arrived. Kenny working on the new trap on a tributary of the Ale today.

Sunday 1st November: Had Kenny arranged as my assistant today, as when water levels are high and there's a possibility of a lot of fish we work the traps in pairs for safety and efficiency reasons. However, he had to finish off the new trap and get its box in first - he was still putting it together when the water started to rise, bringing a few fish to splash around his legs. Off up to Tweedsmuir and Peebles, but the water too high to do anything. No fish seen though - fish move as the water rises, stop at the peak and then run as it falls, so the trick with trapping is to get things working again as soon as the flood starts to go down. Nothing at the Kirkburn, and couldn't get the box back in, so will have to do that quickly tomorrow. The new trap was the star turn, 11 fish in it, 6 of them takeable sized Brown-trout - and all males, as would be expected at the start of a run.  The joker in the box was a 499mm male Grilse, fully mature. This burn is not 2 m wide in at summer levels, in fact, it's not much more than 1m, though bigger today of course. I've mentioned my suspicions about where all these small salmon might spawn before - if they're no bigger than Sea-trout, why shouldn't they go into the same sizes of burns that Sea-trout do ? I came across salmon fry electric-fishing this summer in burns that I would have thought were far too small for salmon to spawn in and at sites far from the main channels. What will this male Grilse spawn with up such a small burn ? It seems unlikely he'll meet a little female Grilse, so it looks like another batch of hybrids is on its way, and yet these are not really viable, so some female Sea-trout will have its egg production knocked out.

Monday 2nd November: Up early, to Edinburgh Airport and a flight to London, to give the talk at the AGM of a fishing syndicate on the Conon. From time to time, I give talks to groups like this who like to hear about how things are done on other rivers. It's also interesting for me to see how things are done elsewhere. Keep in touch with Kenny by phone to see he's getting on cleaning up the traps after yesterday's water.  A flight back afterwards.

Tuesday 3rd November: The annual joint budget meeting of the RTC and the Foundation in the morning, then the rest of the day doing admin for the Living North Seas programme. We've been having problems with the waterproof paper we print out our trap recording sheets on - it can't be written on when wet ! Have used the same stuff for years without a problem, and then suddenly this. It may sound minor, but it is very real nuisance as the sheets inevitabley get wet anywhere near fish processing. We opened a new box to see if that would be any better, but Kenny phones in to say its just as bad as the rest.

Wednesday 4th November: Do some tests on the waterproof paper with Fay & it seems the problem is the surface which lifts off when wet, so she phones the suppliers to get replacements.  In the afternoon, out with Kenny to do the traps as have some repairs still to do. A couple of females in the upstream trap at Tweedsmuir, one very fat and on the point of spawning, the other still normal shaped and with some time to go. Another couple of kelts in the downstream trap on their way back to the river - one of the bits of information we gather here is how long the adults spend in burns like this during spawning  - it's usually 1 to 2 weeks. Some takeable sized males in the Kirkburn trap, no females there yet and an immature in the Peebles trap. Have to keep using new bits of paper to write the data on as as soon as a bit gets wet, it's unusable, a real nuisance. Back at the office, find a salmon has been handed in for inspection, with a strange story: the fish was seen to beach itself and when picked up, was dead. Never heard of anything like this before but could not find anything unusual either internally or externally. It was a small, female Grilse, so remove the eggs for counting later as we gather information on the fecundity of fish for use in making population models etc.

Thursday 5th November: Kenny off to finish the new trap on the Ale tributary; James off to check the site of a report of Signal Crayfish in the Whiteadder catchment, which is bad news since that area's been free of them so far and is protected by the cauld at its foot at Newmills, which no crayfish could get up under its own power. I do the upper Tweed traps again as still working on the repairs. Nothing upstream at Tweedsmuir, but 8 kelts in the downstream trap. The first Sea-trout in the Peebles trap but only a few small males / immatures in the Kirkburn.

Friday 6th November: Monthly joint RTC / TF staff meeting in the morning, then a meeting of those having to put in timesheets for the Living North Seas programme: this record keeping has to be very precise - as well as the proportion of the day spent on relevent work, we also have to record what we did the rest of a day that didn't come under the programme. Why we need to do this, I don't know, but it's what has to be done. In the afternoon, there being little daylight left, out to help Kenny at the traps: nine kelts in the Tweedsmuir trap, and four more that came down while we were there. Mainly male kelts so far.