Monday 3rd September : To the special bicentennial RTC Council meeting at Abbotsford, in a very distinguished setting in the library. James reported on crayfish, fish-counters and the summer electric-fishing programme: Kenny on the TTGI and I gave a summary of what was known about the "bloody" vents on Grilse this year. I also then introduced and gave the background to a proposed RTC Biodiversity and Biosecurity Policy, which was then adopted by the Council. The commemorative lunch afterwards was very enjoyable and it all went very well. It is quite a thought, 200 years of fisheries management on this river, and I would hope, before the bicentennial year ends, to write a short account of the work of the Experimental Committee of the RTC which in the 1860's and 1870's carried out some pioneering work on the identification of juvenile Salmon and Sea-trout stages and life-cycles with smolt tagging. It is hard now to realise just how confused people were  in the past about the different species of salmonids and their life-cycles but there was much acrimonious argument about even the basics, which the work of this Experimental Committee helped to solve.

Tuesday 4th September : Out with Steven to start the Fry Index electric-fishing of the Ettrick and Yarrow. This is something we have been doing since 1997, with the aim of seeing if there is any relationship between the numbers of adults counted upstream the previous autumn at the Selkirk fish counter and the abundance of Fry the following September. If there is a relationship i.e. more adults meaning more Fry then it would show that the numbers of spawners was limiting the number of Fry. If no relationship, then other factors would be the limiting ones and not the numbers of adult fish escaping to spawn. Building up the data to show this takes a good number of years, and has not been helped by fish counter breakdowns but we are getting there and certainly, so far, the the numbers of adults does not appear to be a limiting factor on abundance of Fry in the Ettrick as a whole. Unfortunately, equipment problems strike again and just as we start the last site of the day, the electric-fishing backpack refuses to work. A frantic flurry of mobile phone-calls finds a machine we can borrow at the Freshwater Fisheries Lab at Pitlochry, so arrange to pick it up tomorrow morning.

Wednesdy 5th September : Having gone up to Pitlochry the night before, at 09.00 call in at the Fisheries Lab to collect the machine they can loan us, which is incredibly helpful of them. Call in at Bells, the electricians in Pitlochry who service electric-fishing machines and collect the one they can't do anything with, which will have to go back to the makers, now in Ireland and leave the latest one to go wrong to see if they can deal with it. Back down the motorway to find the new link between the Forth Rd Bridge and the Stirling motorway has just been opened, with appropriate delays and speed limits. Get back to the office at 12.00, a quick turn-around then out with the volunteer for the day and get  a series of electric-fishing sites done on the Yarrow, with the borrowed back-pack. Good numbers of fish, till the last two sites. Back at the office, Kenny takes the machine and heads off to do some trout burn survey work with the Jedforest Club. Turns up at my house later to say that machine not now working properly ! Wonder about the low numbers at the last two sites earlier in the day - machine may have been going wrong then.

Thursday 6th September : James has to go out to do timed sites for a windfarm application with the generator electric-fishing gear, there now being only one back-pack, but he has an Argocat waiting for him, so shouldn't be too much of a problem. Out on the Yarrow again with another volunteer and get another set of sites done.