Saturday 4th July: Down to the Paxton House nets for midday. Overcast, but still hot. Not expecting to get anything much at all in these conditions - what sensible fish would leave the nice, cool, sea to come in to a suffocating, hot, river? However, the first shot gets a small Sea-trout and a little, fresh, Grilse. However, the Grilse is just the wrong size for the net and is a bit meshed, so don't tag it (only really sound fish get tagged). Some blank shots but generally a trout or two, but of just the size to get meshed, so tag less than half. The last shot gets 12 trout, don't tag the meshed ones, but still not quick enough and some casualties - there's little Oxygen in such warm water.
Monday 6thJuly: An admin day all day. No Internet, some problem somewhere.
Tuesday 7thJuly: Out in the morning to help a local fish farm with Rainbows that had got into the water intake system - electric-fished them out. In the afternoon do more Bullhead electric-fishing, combined with the taking of a genetics sample from the salmon juveniles in the burn. Internet back on - apparently a lightning surge had hit the Router.
Wednesday 8th July : A day's leave, to go over to the Nith for some Haaf Netting with James - it was a lot in the Atlantic Salmon Trust auction that I bid for succesfully. A most interesting day, caught nothing though had what must have been a small fish give a little shudder to the net. Hadn't realised the Nith had its own tidal bore and you can actually see the tide coming in. The estuary - and thefore the water - are very sandy, so you can see how such a netting system would work, where the water was clear, it surely couldn't. In the evening, out with Kenny and helpers from the Hawick Angling Club to electric-fish a section of the Ale Water for takeable sized trout, but only got a couple. Also took a genetics sample from the salmon parr and fry there.
Thursday 9th July: Out all day taking genetics samples from the main river: Boleside, Lower Pavilion, Gledswood, Bemersyde, Rutherford and Upper Floors. These samples from fry are being used to map the different populations of salmon within the catchment and then samples from adults of different runs (Spring, Summer, Autumn) will be used to find out what types of adults belong to each population and therefore what type of salmon each population represents. In this way, instead of just having juvenile survey data that tells us about salmon abundance in general, we will be able to have juvenile abundance for the different types of Salmon and so be able to judge the strength of, for instance, Spring Salmon, from their juvenile stocks rather than just from their catch records.
Friday 10th July: Weekly staff meeting in the morning. In the afternoon a meeting with Durham University about making a Ph.D. studentship out of the Sea-trout and Salmon tracking work included in the Living North Seas programme that funding has been obtained for. This would include tracking smolts downriver to find out how many successfully reached the sea; tracking fresh, adult, Salmon and Sea-trout upriver to see what non-angling mortality they suffer and tracking Sea-trout kelts back downriver to see what and where their losses were. As acoustic tags work in salt water, this would also give us our first information on what the estuary is like for smolts to pass through and how they do it. The estuary seems fine, but it would be good to know that it actually was.