Monday 1st March: The Tweed Commission's AGM and Quarterly meetings in the morning. James gave presentations on the electric-fishing results and how this identifies problems with fish passage and habitat quality and on the fish counter results. I gave one on changes in the sizes of Tweed salmon, showing how there has been a large-scale change in Autumn from multi-sea-winter Salmon dominating the catches 100 years ago, to the present situation, when much smaller Grilse are the main fish, the 1940's being the watershed when it all changed. The Grilse too, are getting smaller, the 6lbs and under category much increasing: I was at a scale-reading workshop last week, where we heard from the Department's scale reader (who's been doing their scale-reading for over 40 years) about how much more difficult it is now, with so many growth checks appearing on scales. When growth slows in Winter, the growth rings on a scale become closer together - but if growth is checked at other times, the rings also narrow. Distinguishing Winters in amongst growth checks can be very difficult and, on some scales with a great many checks, impossible. In the afternoon, catching up on admin and working out the sampling strategy for taking tissue samples for genetic analysis from trout as part of the Living North Seas programme on Sea-trout. The analyses will be done by The Technical University of Denmark and, having had their advice on sampling, had to work out where in the Tweed the samples should come from and how taking them would best fit in with our other work.

Tuesday 2nd March - Out with Niall to get the smolt traps repaired and ready. No tags or smolts yet, but have to get prepared. It's possible that the smolts will be late this year with the cold weather, which would actually be rather convenient as getting the listening stations into place along the main channel will take a bit of time. I've been out with Niall looking for the right sort of places and have covered most of the middle river so far, though still with some of the lower river to check.   A lot of snow still on the hills, but bright sunshine. One sign of Spring though, the Oystercatchers are back up the rivers - in small flocks still, not yet split up into pairs.

Wednesday 3rd March: A day in the office. Drafting replies to criticisms made by various government agencies and advisors of the RTC's licence applications for predatory bird control, then a meeting on the stocking of Alemoor Loch with coarse fish species and finally,drawing up a system for bird counts on the R. Till. Also got in the results of tests carried out on juvenile salmon that I collected last year as  looking as if they could be hybrids- 60% of the Parr were indeed hybrids, but only 5% of the fry. It appears that Parr hybrids are more obvious than Fry but we'll need to do a few more samples to be sure of this. It seems that a red adipose fin  by itself is not a dependable sign of a hybrid on a fry that otherwise looks like a salmon, though the fish identification books do not list this as a colour to be expected on the adipose of a salmon juvenile. The story appears to be that hybrid males are the most likely to be fertile to some degree as they produce millions of sperm, at least some of which can be viable while hybrid females, limited to a few thousand eggs have fewer chances. It would be interesting to know how large male hybrids can get and whether they can become big enough to compete succesfully for salmon females - the ones I have seen up till now have been relatively small, up to 60cms or so. At that size, they might have trouble winning fights for a female salmon and therefore be more likely to mate with smaller, female, trout - with only smaller, trout, males to fight against. An adult "Salmon" of 59.5cms that was brought in last October by an observant boatman who thought it might be a hybrid was also confirmed as being one in these tests.

Thursday 4th March: Started the day with some dissection, looking at a very mature but very fresh fish caught in the first week of February. Clearly new in the river, but with a well-developed kype and mature gonads. Probably a "Spring-spawning Autumn fish" or what is known traditionally on the Tweed as a "Blue" salmon. On the 29th of February 1992 I saw fish over a fresh redd on the Leader - if it hadn't been a leap year, that would have been spawning in March.  Spawning can be late here.  Rest of the day on the reply to the criticisms made of the RTC's bird control licence application and on the budgetting for the tracking work.

Friday 5th March: Monthly joint RTC / TF staff meeting in the morning, followed by the monthly biologists, meeting. Kenny working on making and putting out logbooks for this season and analyses of the results of last year's. James working on analyses of last year's electric-fishing. I'm still analysing last years trapping results. In the afternoon, finish off the draft reply to the RTC's application for bird control licences and then listen to Niall give a staff presentation on the tracking work.