Monday 5th May : When I went into the office at 08.00 there was a pretty special atmosphere - a  Salmon found nearly dead in the Whiteadder on Saturday morning had been put into the wet room by a bailiff on Saturday and forgotten about. It having been a warm weekend, its presence had become very obvious throughout the building. As it was from the Whiteadder and we are wanting more scales from there, I offered to draw straws with James & Kenny to find out who was going to take the sample, but meeting with an insistance by Kenny that he was the Trout and Grayling biologist only, was forced to tell James to do it, though gave him a (latex-gloved) hand  with it. Rest of the day spent on entering data from the traps and composing a talk on the use of historic sources of information on fisheries to give to the Society for the History of Natural History in Edinburgh on the 17th

Tuesday 6th May: Entering smolt trap data in the morning and tackling an admin backlog in the afternoon. Kenny in from a day off fishing to say he had found a nest of spawning Brook Lamprey on the Whiteadder at Ellemford bridge, the first record we have this on the Whiteadder.

Wednesday 7th May: Almost the whole day spent drafting the work packages for the proposed international North Sea Sea-trout programme.

Thursday 8th May: Get the Sea-trout work packages finished and sent off and catch up on more traps data entry.

Friday 9th May: Usual staff meeting in the morning, after a scout along the Leader to see if any Brook Lamprey spawning sites that we could film. More admin in the afternoon, with a visit from the new Catchment Planner from the Tweed Forum to meet us all and get briefed on what we do.