Fish Counter Results for July 2007 : The Ettrick counter was out of action, again,  for the whole of this month, and so has missed the fish that would be expect to have travelled up the Ettrick on the high water. The Gala counter, however, was in operation, and has given its first July total. Whether or not any fish would go up the Gala in a more normal summer with lower water levels remains to be seen but it is of interest that, given enough water, there are some Salmon and Sea-trout that will head up the Gala Water in July.

The differences in the behaviour of the fish of these two tributaries is already obvious from the counters - The Ettrick run begins in April, the Gala in July, yet another example of the now well known fact that all Salmon are not the same and that different areas within the same catchment can have Salmon adapted to different conditions and behaving in different ways.

Individual fish identifications from the photos / video clips are more difficult on the Gala as the water is always very dirty during a spate, which is not the case on the Ettrick and it may be that only a quarter of so of fish will be directly identifiable at this counter (as opposed to around three-quarters for the Ettrick).  Two of the fish that went up the Gala were clearly Salmon, but there were probably others, unidentifiable as such in the silty water.

The Ettrick counter has been re-started with a datalogger sent from Iceland. The one from the counter was sent back to Iceland twice for repair, but never worked. The spare sent from Iceland, however, got the counter working again immediately it was put in.