Saturday 26th June: To the Paxton House netting station with Niall to tag Salmon and Sea-trout. Not great conditions, bright and sunny and very warm. Rather surprised therefore to end up tagging a dozen Sea-trout - no Salmon though.

Sunday 27th June: To the Tibbie Shiels Inn on St. Mary's Loch to meet with the team from Glasgow University and the local club who are netting the loch and the Meggat Reservoir to check for Charr (my job being to check that their nets etc. were clean so no chance of any unwanted introductions). Charr were introduced to the Meggat from Loch Doon, the last population left in the south of Scotland,  about 20 years ago and there are rumours that they have been seen in the loch as well. There is also a possibility that a "benthic" (bottom dwelling) population of  native Charr might have survived in the loch even though the surface population became extinct before the 19th century. It is only comparatively recently that the phenomenon of Charr existing in two or more quite distinct and physically different populations within the same loch was confirmed in Scotland (in Loch Rannoch), though this has been well known in Scandanavia for much longer. When the introduction was made to Meggat I asked for bottom netting to be done in St. Mary's to check for a benthic population there, but nothing was found.

The  nets used for this sort of sampling, "Nordic" or "Tundhovn" nets, are monofilament gills nets which are very easy to set at different depths, right down to the bottom. Back in the early 1980's when I was working as part of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology team surveying Scotland for the effects of Acid Rain, my job was to set these nets in hill lochs to assess the trout populations. I used to walk from one loch to another on the first day, setting these nets using a tiny inflateable dinghy and a pair of frogmen's flippers to get them out into the water, and then go round and retrieve them the next, walking up and down hill with a backpack of dripping nets and fish. The point of all this effort was that as eggs and small fry are much more susceptible to the effects of acidification than larger, older, fish, populations die out through lack of recruitment of young fish, and it is very obvious when this is happening - all the fish in an affected loch are old and large.

Monday 28th June: Down to the Berwick nets for 08.30. Very bright, sunny and warm, and a south wind, which is one of the many things the netsmen say is no good for catching fish. To try and avoid the weed, a different part of the station was fished from usual, but the water was shallow and still had a lot of weed. Shifted the winch position three times, but still only a single Sea-trout caught & gave up early. Last Thursday they had 10 salmon, on Friday one Salmon (tagged by James) and about 20 Sea-trout, so today poor by contrast.

Tuesday 29th June: Down to the nets for 11.30 - still bright and sunny, but a little cooler and a northerly wind. Only started at low water, so the ebb tide and its weed avoided and also back at the normal part of the station. Caught fish steadily, including 4 salmon in the one shot and ended up with nearly 20 Sea-trout. Back at the office, caught up with some of the e-mails from last week when on leave.  James and Kenny out electric-fishing a main channel site on the Leet Water.

Wednesday 30th June: Down to the Berwick nets for the last time in  this series - tomorrow, they can start taking Salmon. A bit less bright than previously, but again only starting at low water, to avoid the ebb and its weed. Still a lot of weed - so much, in fact, that at the end of one shot, the netsmen didn't realise there were three Sea-trout in the net and just let it drop and started carting off the weed. No Salmon today, only Sea-trout, including one that must have been 10lbs. Back to the office in the late afternoon and started revising the review and discussion paper on our electric-fishing analyses techniques drafted by James. One of the things I have wanted to do with our salmon scales collection is analyse them for the last 10 years or so to see how growth patterns might have changed, in particular to see whether fish with growth checks on them have become commoner or not. This would obviously take a great deal of time, so I put it up as a possible student research topic to Napier University's M. Sc. course in Water Management and a student has taken it on. A meeting in the evening with him, and Barry, our scale-reader, to get him started, introduce him to the scales database and give him several years' worth of scales packets to take away and start work on.

Thursday 1st July: The second Boatmen's Electric-fishing day today, for a group of ten this time. Same format as before, a brief talk on the results we get and what they tell us, then down to the Leader below the office to see some electric-fishing action in a main channel. The usual mass of Salmon fry and parr, and several Eels. It was noticeable, however, that in the two weeks since the last event, there was a much lower proportion of  obvious "losers" visible amongst the salmon fry. With so many eggs hatching - an average 8lb female produces 5,000 - there are far more fry than can be supported by  the food and space in a river and within three months, typically, around 95% of salmon fry die. Electric-fishing early in the summer always finds little, thin, fry in amongst the big, fat, ones showing clearly which are  winning in the battle for territory and therefore survival and which are  losing -  i.e which are the German team, and which are the English! Obviously, many of the "losers" have finally died off at this site in the last couple of weeks. Back to the office for coffee and a demonstration of how the VAKI fish counters work, then off up to the Kelphope Burn at the top of the Leader to see electric-fishing in a small channel. The usual mass of Trout fry and parr here, and also lamprey larvae in a patch of sediment. Lunch at the Carfraemill Hotel and then back to the office.

Electric-fishing always amazes people who've never seen it before, how little fish appear out of nowhere when the electricity goes on and the masses of fish that are found in just a few metres of stream. It's something anyone who's interested in fish or fishing should see, but few do. We're discussing therefore if there was some way we could set up open "days" at weekends or in evenings for anyone interested  to come and see it & just how naturally productive of salmon and trout fry the Tweed system actually is. Past efforts to do this have failed badly, almost no-one turning up but those events were arranged through the local Countryside Ranger service, perhaps the wrong target audience. Using this website might be more successful.