Saturday 12th June: Downloaded the lower river acoustic listening stations with Niall - a few more smolts have made it (almost) all the way - and  then to the Paxton netting station to do some more tagging. Half a dozen or so members of the public there to see the action, which was a bit hectic to begin with as a salmon and half a dozen Sea-trout in the first shot. However, at Paxton I'm able to use aerators and have more tubs going so can handle more fish at once. These are the first Sea-trout I've been able to tag this year, mostly small. In fact, had to use the smaller Carlin tags on the smallest, rather than Floy tags. Again, very good condition fish and going by the reports from the northern rivers, it's a good Sea-trout year all up and down the East coast, even in the North-east where there's been some concerns in recent years - the Dee seems to be having a particularly good year.

Two photos attached, both from the nets at Gardo. One shows a Sand-eel, about 12cms in length,  an important part of many food chains. There are actually five species in British waters - what is perhaps not generally realised is that Sand-eels are predators themselves and eat larval fish along with worms and other bottom species. The other photo shows a Sea-trout with a lamprey sucker mark on it.

Monday 14th June: Not at the Gardo nets today, as had to stay in the office - they got eight salmon (6 and 2 grilse) and over 20 Sea-trout though. Downloaded the Melrose listening station, another smolt from the Gala on it. There's 10 or so smolts that have left Philiphaugh but not yet turned up at Melrose which now need to be found. It all seems to be very slow and makes me wonder what it would be like in a wetter year.

Tuesday 15th June:  Down at the nets again, but a frustrating session, piles of weed clogging the net, so the netting moved to a different area of the batt - and then it got caught on a "hudd", or snag and a second boat had to be sent out to free it - and then the resulting hole had to be repaired. Ended early, before the flood tide really started, with nothing caught, except a Gray Mullet. Apparently this is somewhat early for these they are usually caught next month.

Wednesday 16th June: An electric-fishing day for Boatmen, to explain the technique and the results and let them see it in action. Boatmen (and anglers) work with the tip of the population pyramid, the adults, when numbers in the Salmon life cycle are at their lowest point. Electric-fishing, however,  is the only way to see the broad base of the pyramid, the masses of fry in the nursery areas. The first site we looked at was on the lower Leader, just below the office here, lots of Salmon parr (one winter old, now in their second summer, 100mm or so in size) and fry, though these are still only 30-40mm in length, too small for efficient electric-fishing (we usually start sampling in early July at lowland sites where growth is faster). Even at this small size only a couple of months out of the gravel there's considerable variation in growth and those that are failing are obviously smaller and thinner than those that are succeeding. With so many thousand eggs in every redd, far more fry hatch (in normal circumstances) than can be supported by the available food and space, so there's an intense struggle for survival and the "losers" are these smaller, thinner fish obviously on their way out.  The biggest loss of salmon at any point in their life cycle is at the fry stage and is due to competition with other salmon fry - typically, around 95% of salmon fry die within three months of emerging from the gravel. There were  a couple of "jokers" in the catch as well, the smallest Grayling fry I've ever seen, the same size as the Salmon fry. After the coffee break, we went up to the top of the Leader to see what is in small channels and there we found a mass of trout fry, as well as lots of trout parr, though there were no trout fry at the first site. This demonstrated how salmon and trout - two closely related species -split up the habitat between them, the salmon spawning in the larger channels and the trout in the smaller. We also found a nest of lamprey larvae in a silty area, another thing that can only be seen with electric-fishing. A good lunch in the Carfraemill hotel afterwards then back to the office.

Thursday 17th June: Down to the nets at 12.00 noon, where some new tactics to try and defeat the weed. These were to just  fish in the flood tide and  to go to the lowest down part of the bank, an area not normally used. Didn't work very well, though, only 1 Salmon, 1 Grilse and a couple of Sea-trout and it was called off early again. The tangle of weed in the net brought in more small fish, this time half a dozen Codling in one shot, and a Sea-trout smolt. This was of some interest as the netting is in salt-water, so this smolt was one of the successful ones. Took photos and some scales from it to show the appearance of such a fish and to see what its growth pattern looked like.

Friday 18th June: Down to the local hall at Norham for the annual Benefactors day. Niall demonstrated the acoustic tags and tracking equipment and we then went electric-fishing for lamprey larvae. The hope was that we would get both Sea and River Lamprey larvae and so could demonstrate the differences between the species. Although we got about 20 larvae in a few minutes, all were River Lamprey, so that fell a bit flat. However, found some other animals of interest - a lot of nymphs of the "true" Mayfly, Ephemera danica. These burrow into silt, just like Lamprey larvae, so they are almost always found together, at least on the Tweed. Also some Eels, Sticklebacks, trout parr and a few small Flounders. Back to the hall, where I gave a presentation on the evidence for there being different stocks of Sea-trout within the Tweed system

NEXT WEEK: On leave, apart from a meeting on Monday at the Faskally Laboratory on historic catch records.