Monday 19th May : On traps duty this week, so out to check these. Forty-nine smolts in the Tinnis trap, all very silver and completely smolted. Very active too, jumping when in the tub, another sign that they are full smolts and wanting to get on downriver. Also got a couple of Baggies (Minnows) in full spawning colouration of reds and greens - they really are very exotic looking at this time of year. Rest of the day in the office, on admin and inputting the traps data.  Kenny out with schoolkids today, as part of TweedStart and was out yesterday to collect the catch data from the Scottish fly-fishing team qualifier competition. It's very useful to have data from such events as it shows what top class anglers can catch in the river.

Tuesday 20th May: Fishing yesterday evening at Dryburgh South, caught a near fresh Salmon of about 12lbs just about 21.00hrs. Read the scales today and was surprised to find it was a 3 Sea-winter fish, which are usually larger than this. To Kelso for a meeting of the Area Advisory Group for the Tweed - this is a consultation group involved in the Water Framework Directive implementation process. We now have the draft River Basin Management Plan for the SolwayTweed river "basin" to review, also saw the latest attempts to identify which parts of the river system were at risk from various causes. We will be having a meeting with the SEPA personel attempting to do this next month, to see if we agree with their classifications. Did the traps afterwards, about 50 smolts at Tinnis - and one takeable trout of 10"

Wednesday 21st May: Out early to do the traps, only a dozen at Tinnis. Out with others to be shown round the new Scottish Parliament building by Jeremy Purvis, our MSP. All very interesting, but when symbolism has to be explained, it has failed its purpose - symbols used in buildings or any other context have to be readable as symbols without further explanation. Back to catch up on admin & a phone call from a press agency about the Pink Salmon caught at Boleside last year being recognised as the British Rod-caught record for the species. The journalist making the call knew nothing about fish or fishing and got somewhat confused when I said it was caught on a "Flying C" and even more confused by my explanations and it took several minutes to sort things out.