Monday 1st September : A long quarterly meeting of the RTC in the morning, with the new assessments, the interim stocking policy and the review of the Spring Salmon policy all being discussed. James and Kenny excused as out electric-fishing to catch up, so just me on the Foundation side. Gave a shortened presentation on the practical effects of Beaver introduction on salmonids, which could well be very severe in our lowland situation where Salmon and Sea-trout penetrate far up smaller channels and burns to spawn. Lent a couple of record books from a rod fishery to update our data on their catches - this particular fishery has the longest series of records from a fishery of unchanged size on the river and its data has been very valuable in showing the large scale and long-term changes of size in fish caught over the last 120 years. More indoor work for Steven, getting this computerised.  In the afternoon, out to the trap near Maxton to brief the Countryside Skills students from the local college who work the trap one day a week during their Autumn term on what these traps are for and the importance of their data. We'll give them practical training in fish handling later, when the run starts. Call in to collect scales from Upper Mertoun on the way back - a couple of nice fish on the slab. Kenny supposed to be back at 16.00 to go and hire a van to make up for the Nissan being off the road, but no sign of him - when I phone, he's still electric-fishing on the Whiteadder, having completely forgotten about van hire.

Tuesday 2nd September: Most of the day spent drawing up the proposal for video monitoring of fish using (or not) the regulator channels and sluices on the outflow of St. Mary's Loch that was discussed at the meeting last week. Sent the draft off to SEPA at the end of the day - the proposal is joint work with them for presentation to Scottish Water. The electric-fishing data from the burns that enter the loch is very much poorer than that for those that enter the Yarrow downstream of the lochs but this could be an effect of the predatory Pike and Perch in the loch on the smolts that have to migrate through it - or it could be access into the loch for spawning adults. Checking the accessability of the loch should settle whether it is the latter or not.

Wednesday 3rd September: Out with Steven to do Fry Index sites up the Yarrow. We do about 150 sites, each of 5 minutes electric-fishing, in September each year to give an index of salmon Fry abundance that can be related back to the  number of adult spawning salmon counted through the Ettrick fish counter the previous Autumn. The aim is to see if there is a relationship between numbers of adults and numbers of resulting juveniles - if there is, then it would mean that the numbers of adults is limiting the numbers of juveniles and that there were therefore not enough fish escaping to spawn. This is the tenth year we have done this, but no sign of any relationship, so this probably the last year we will do this annually. The weather against us and by the time we are on the Douglas Burn we are having to take refuge from heavy showers in between sampling. We are also taking tissue samples from 50 fish there, for genetic analyses and I end up kneeling on the ground trying to delicately remove fins from Fry while Steven holds an umbrella over me as the rain pours down.

Thursday 4th September: All out to the College Burn, a tributary of the Bowmont / Glen (a trib. of the Till) which is well known for its amazing Whitling population. Thousands get up the Hethpool Linns each year to reach it, a great sight,  - but we have only ever found one adult salmon above the linns, and never any juveniles. It's a great example of how Sea-trout are actually better at getting over obstacles than salmon, though the latter can make larger jumps, they are not so good at "scrabbles". We electric-fish a measured kilometre of one of the small tributaries of the College to collect data on the population and see how water levels affect the distance upstream they penetrate each year and then net / electric-fish one of the shoals on the main College. The fish in the little tributary are smaller than those in the main burn and scale-reading shows them to be be first time spawners, and though now brown, they were the little silver Whitling of April and May. Further down in the main College, the fish are larger and these are the repeat spawners that were kelts in March and April and only get back to the river in July and August and so are further downstream than the earlier fish. It having been a wet summer, the fish are well in to the tributary and we get 24 (and miss another 15). On the main College, the water is very peaty and its difficult to spot the shoals, but we manage another 8 fish.

Friday 5th September : The monthly joint RTC / TF staff meeting in the morning, then our monthly Biologists' meeting. After lunch, Steven and I go out to get a genetics sample from the upper Yarrow, but suffer another electric-fishing machine breakdown and have to return with nothing done. Find the new machine has arrived at the office while we have been away - but only two of the three packages are there.