Monday 4th August : A pretty disastrous day. Kenny's electric-fishing on the Leader a washout. James got way up the Whiteadder to do his before finding the machine wouldn't work and I get the consultants' draft proposal for European funding for the North Sea Sea-trout work I've been discussing with others over the past few months and find they have almost entirely ignored what we having been talking about and come up with a basically new project concentrating on barriers to fish in Dutch dykes. Could be a dead end on this route. Off to Pitlochry in the evening to take the machine in to repair tomorrow morning.

Tuesday 5th August: Hand in the electric-fishing machine for repair - the problem is that the original company was bought by an Irish one which moved everything to Dublin without leaving even an Agent in the UK, let alone a repair shop. It's been a great problem for everyone as sending equipment to Dublin is not only expensive, it means all sorts of problems with Customs and different VAT rates. The electricians in Pitlochry, where the Freshwater Lab is based, has thus become the centre for repairs etc for Scotland.  Back down  over lunch - got more of Kenny's work read read through and ready for distribution to the clubs. More e-mails flying around about the N. Sea work.

Wednesday 6th August: Had arranged today to electric-fish one of our fencing sites, in North Northumberland,  which we have been doing since it was fenced in 1993. Unlike some of our other monitoring sites, the conditions have remained the same since, with the fenced area developing a lush vegetation while the unfenced has stayed grazed. At other sites, the "unfenced" has become "ungrazed" due to changes on the farms, which wrecks the monitoring. The trees in the fenced area at this sited have grown very well and the stream is almost unrecognisable now (see attachments). In fish terms, fry  numbers have not changed between fenced and unfenced but parr numbers, orginally greater in the unfenced sites are now greater in the fenced.  However, the water levels just too high today, though we start we just have to give up & clear a local fish pass instead. Passing through Wooler gives the chance of sausages from Johnson's, the butchers there, who make wide range of wonderful types - get Red Onion and Sage, the very best - Pork and Marmalade - not being available today. Collect up the scales from the beat on the Till that takes them for us - been a good year for Sea-trout for them so far.

Thursday 7th August: Was supposed to be electric-fishing today, but obviously not worth even setting out - seven foot at Peebles. Spend the day on data entry and getting and recieving e-mails about the North Sea Sea-trout work. Book my ticket to Amsterdam for the next meeting. Send Steven & Sean out to take photos of the fish traps in high water, which don't have. James down to Newcastle for the first meeting of the research group looking at new methods of controlling Signal Crayfish, which the  RTC are part funding.

Friday 8th August:  Weekly staff meeting in the morning, bits of admin for the afternoon.