Monday 6th November : The annual joint meeting of the RTC committee and the trustees of The Tweed Foundation to go over and co-ordinate their budgets. Crayfish are a new item for expenditure. After lunch head downriver to pick up scale packets. One of the sections of the Tweed fisheries management plan is about catch records and scale-reading is part of this - only by reading scales can Grilse and Salmon be accurately identified. Other data from scales, such as the age at which fish smolted can show up  longer term changes that might be occurring in the population. The lengths and weights entered on the packet for each scale sample also give us the sizes of fish being caught each year and this year the fish are small. Of the packets I collect, over half are from fish in the 60-69cms - it will be interested to compare this year's sizes with our previous data. We've being collecting scales (for which the boatmen are paid) since 1992 and now have over 17,000 in our new scales computer database. I'm told it will be very easy to extract just the data I want from this database. Back at the office, I sort out the scale packets and then send out the Ettrick fish counter results for October to the e-mail listing signed up for these. There's been some problems with the counter this year and it has had to be set to keep video clips for everything it rejects as well as for the "events" that it recognises as fish as it has been rejecting many actual fish. This means a huge number of video clips to check through, which my assistant James has spent most of the day doing. It's a good total for October though, just under 3,000.

Tuesday 7th November : Meet up with a team from the BBC Natural History Unit, Bristol, in the Salmon viewing centre at Philiphaugh at 10.00. Very pleased to find that my late uncle, Dr. Bruce Campbell, who was a wildlife producer in that unit in the 1960's is still remembered - he had programme called "Out of Doors" which I remember watching as a child and I can still recall its title sequence, a deer running through a river. After showing them around the centre, I take them up the Ettrick stopping at Fauldshope brig and the Rankle burn to see if we can see any fish, which we do.  On up to the top of the Ettrick where I introduce the team to Mr. Jackson, the farmer on whose ground I reckon the best place to film spawning fish is. He's been keeping an eye on things and tells us that he's never had so many fish in his pool. I'm very glad to see that the water is crystal clear - when originally approached by the BBC about spawning salmon being filmed (for a program to be called "The Nature of Britain")  I had thought of the upper Ettrick as the best place as the water there can be so clear. At the pool, there's lots of activity and a single redd at the tail, with a fish on it. I'd been worried about getting the team on site at the right time ( I put them off last week, as it looked like spawning was going to be a bit later than usual) but it's spot on - there will be redding tonight and for the next few nights, but they will have to get their film quickly, it doesn't go on for long. On the way down the Ettrick I'm stopped by Billy Douglas, the Buccleuch Estates boatman, with some photos of his I'd asked to see, of a Sea Lamprey his children had caught in Selkirk in the 1980's. I'll scan these as evidence and add the record to the database.  A great advantage of going up the Ettrick is that it takes me past Oakwood Mill farm, which sells the best - and biggest - free range eggs.  Back at the office, help check the proofs of the latest newsletter and answer e-mails, including one requesting data on the recapture rates of tagged Grayling for a forthcoming magazine article.

Wednesday 8th November : A rarity for me, virtually a whole day spent on the one piece of work, a presentation on the Tweed's predator control policy for a meeting of wildlife vets in London later this month. A phone call in the morning from Billy Douglas, the Buccleuch Estates boatman, to say that it has been reported to him that all the Ettrick from Ettrickshaws up to Deloraine is "red" with Salmon spawning. Try to contact the film crew but mobile phones don't work up the Ettrick beyond Ettrickbridge. Good news anyway. My assistant, Fiona, has started on some work I've long wanted done, a check through the Online Archive of the "The Scotsman" for articles on the Tweed. Results are immediate - an 1870's description of the Tweed looking "as if a battle had been fought in it" because of the number of fish kills along its  course  due to pollution. An interesting account too of something I had only seen passing references to before - a court case in the 1870's by Tweed proprietors against the mills in Galashiels because of the pollution they caused. Not only did the proprietors win, the court ordered a technical investigation of the effluent discharge processes of each mill and the further ordered that large scale trials be carried out to find improved methods. Until the Tweed River Purification Board was set up in the 1950's, the RTC had powers to prosecute over pollution but this newspaper report is the first reference I have seen to "River Tweed Pollution Commissioners".  There's also a letter giving an account of the response of the Commissioners to a plan to net out smolts and send them safely down to Berwick by train. We do a lot of historical research here because, as the saying goes, "If you don't know where you're coming from you can't know where you're going". Also, to assume that everything you see today in the fish population is the result of just recent factors is a distinctly dubious assumption. At present, also, we are working with the University of Exeter to identify any gentically distinctive sub-populations of Salmon within the Tweed catchment and as part of this we need to be able to identify our "new" stocks - those that been re-established as barriers were removed. For example, the Gala Water stock only dates from 1949, the Leader from 1959, the Ale Water from 1923 and so on - but we as yet do not have a complete record of how many of our stocks have such "interupted" histories. Archive searches are the only way we can find this.

Thursday 9th November : Most of the day getting the presentation for the vets meeting ready, interupted from time to time by the usual small things. A phone call from the BBC crew about getting a Salmon in spawning colour for a tame Sea Eagle to be filmed eating. A check with the Bailiffs finds that they have nothing in their freezer, cleared out not so long ago. Ring the BBC back and explain it is not legal to kill coloured fish and that anglers bringing in their catches to smokeries would not be thrilled with the suggestion that they had killed a spawning Salmon - and that it was now illegal to sell rod-caught fish in Scotland anyway. Seems the way out is to get a farmed Salmon and "distress" it so it looks as if its a spawner. Fiona's trawl of "The Scotsman" archive continues to turn out gold - I never knew that under the original Tweed Acts, smolts had only been protected in April and May and outside those months could be legitimately caught by trout anglers.