Monday 13th May : Largely an office day, drafting the RTC/TF response to the government's Non-native Species Strategy consultation document - not very inspiring and not going to deal with the ever increasing threat to natural biodiversity, more to do with saving the government inconvenience . Out at lunchtime to see my cousin who has come to fish his rods at Lower  Pavilion this week - timed just right for the water for once. The samples from the diseased smolts sent to the Fish Health Inspectorate at Aberdeen last week have arrived OK and it will now be a couple of weeks till the cultures grow and any bacteria etc. can be identified.

Tuesday 14th May : In the office, working on the Management Manual and also adapting the proposal for a Celtic Sea-trout Programme to make a North Sea Sea-trout Programme. The Celtic programme has been put together by Irish, Welsh and South- and North- Western English fisheries organisations to investigate the Sea-trout populations around the Irish Sea  and in particular to find out where the fish of the different rivers go when at sea. Exactly the same needs to be done with Sea-trout around the North Sea (from tagging in the 1920's and 30's, it is known that one element of Tweed Sea-trout go down to the Dutch coast and there was even a tag return from the Danish coast so there must be links right across the North Sea) so when I heard about the Celtic programme in Ireland in February, at the launch of the Slaney River Trust, I got the idea of mirroring it for the North Sea.  The key will be finding partners along the east coast of England and in the Netherlands, North Germany and Denmark and the first stage in doing this is to come up with a proposal.

Wednesay 15th May : Finish the North Sea Sea-trout proposal and send it off for to the Celtic group for comments. Off to the Patrons & Benefactors day at the Roxburghe golf course clubhouse. They saw the work of Tweedstart in the morning, and Kenny tagging a Grayling he had caught. I talked to them after lunch, this year being completely different and giving a presentation on my work in my previous job, at the Fisheries College of the University of the Mediterranean in Turkey, where I worked on a collapsed population of commercially important Zander. Also talked about my trips to catch Mediterranean Trout (Salmo trutta macrostigma) in the Taurus Mountains and introduced Rainbow Trout in one of the local rivers as well as about the wild flowers to be found in the mountains.

Thursday 16th May : On leave, to fish in the annual river competition of the Ellem Fishing Club, which has been run since 1834.  Go to the upper Blackadder and get one 9oz stockie, lose another fish of the same size and get a couple of 8 1/2" trout. The Dry Fly attracts little fish, but nothing sizable and the catches are made on upstream nymph or wet fly

Friday 17th May : Weekly staff meeting, various small bits of admin and work on the TF Annual Report and the Non-native Species Strategy consultation, which has to be in by the 23rd.