Saturday 19th July:  Netting at Paxton House to get fish for tagging to measure exploitation rate by angling. This is crucial data as it is obviously very important to know if 5% of the fish running up river are being caught or 50%. The water level - 1ft 6" at Norham is the maximum for this netting station, so it is only just possible. Start with a smaller mesh net of our own but get nothing for half the session. After switching to the ordinary Paxton net, get four Sea-trout and three Salmon, which are tagged.

Monday 21st July : On leave

Tuesday 22nd July:  In the office in the morning. Hear that the Paxton House nets had a hundred fish in one tide last night, so just missed getting a very good sample. In the afternoon, down to see the netsman at Berwick to go through the routine for taking tissue samples for genetic analyses.

Wednesday 23rd: In the morning, met, along with Nick,  the new director of the Atlantic Salmon Trust to talk over the Salmon and Sea-trout world in general and what we think would be useful directions for the AST to follow.

Thursday 24th: Down to Newcastle for another meeting on setting up a programme to look at Sea-trout throughout the North Sea. Things are beginning to get international as we had, for the first time, the Dutch consultants who know how to draw up these European proposals. The next meeting is in Amsterdam, so things are getting serious.

Friday 25th: A lot of small admin things in the morning - no staff meeting as usual as everyone else down at the Kelso show. I'm on the afternoon shift there, and all tomorrow.