Monday 21st April : Most of the day spent working on the proposal for a North Sea Sea-trout Programme. Last February, at a meeting in Ireland, I learnt of a Celtic Sea Sea-trout Programme that was being put together, and thought it would be good to have an equivalent for the North Sea.  There have now been several meetings with the EA & CEFAS about putting a North Sea package together and progress is picking up. Through the Association of Rivers Trusts we are in touch with an EU North Sea programme and could have our Sea-trout proposal become the fish theme of this. Worked out today what exactly we would do on the Tweed as part of this.

Tuesday 22nd April : Another day writing in the office - this time, material for the Biennial Review which comes out later this year. Revised a paper on temperature measurements written by my assistant Steven last year and put together a short article on salmon sizes over the years. Scales from a 98cms long, 25lbs fish from Hendersyde brought in - a 3 Sea-winter fish as would be expected. There seem, again, to be more of these large, older, Springers around than usual. Tweed Springers are almost all 2 Sea-winter fish of 6-10lbs, anything older is rare and always has been. Back in the 1940's there were enough older Springers around to be noticeable in analyses but even then there were never many.

Wednesday 24th April: In the office again, catching up on data entry and processing.

Thursday 25th April : Down to Newcastle for a meeting of the group putting together a proposal for a North Sea Sea-trout research and management programme. Two reps from the Environment Agency's special Euro-funding team  and Prof. David Green from Aberdeen University, an expert on coastal mapping, there for the first time. Also a rep from the Celtic Sea-trout programme as well, which we are copying. I now have to draft the actual work packages, which will again be closely modelled on those of the Celtic programme.

Friday 26th April : On leave.