Monday 31st May: As I was up north at the weekend, went in to the Freshwater Fishery lab at Pitlochry on the way back down to use the libary and collect more little vials of ethanol for preserving tissue samples for genetic analysis. These can't be sent by post, so have to be collected whenever someone is passing.

Tuesday 1st June: Writing in the office in the morning, then getting the tagging and sampling gear ready for tomorrow. First news of the some of the smolts tagged on the Gala - they went more or less straight through the cauld in Gala hardly seeming to stop at all. Whether all will find it so easy remains to be seen. Reports in of little Grilse being caught, a traditional start to the Summer. These little fish are quite distinctive and when we were doing the radio-tracking in the 1990's I made a special effort to tag some of them, the problem being that the tags could only be put in fish of over 50cms in length, which ruled out most of them. Of those that I did manage to tag, home areas were the Upper Tweed, Ettrick, Gala and Leader.

Wednesday 2nd June: Down to the nets at Gardo (this netting station is on gravel banks just downstream of the old brig of Berwick and is only visible at low tides). They started here yesterday with a catch of around 40 Sea-trout and a handful of Salmon, 4 of which were small, June, Grilse. All Salmon are being released this month, hence the tagging opportunity. It's good that the little Grilse are here at the time they would be expected - last year, the netsmen told me, they didn't see the little, "June", Grilse till August. Bright and sunny conditions, which are not great for netting, and the first three shots were blanks. As low water approached, however, it improved and they started to catch. Mostly Whitling but with some Sea-trout of 5 to 7lbs as well. The Whitling are great little fish, of two size classes, around 420mm and around 480mm. The first are those that have been away for one winter at sea and the second, the two sea-winter fish - all but one of today's fish were the 2 sea-winter size. We have a study area on the College Burn to look at Whitling in their home zone and there we find that the furthest up fish by sampling time (end of August, early September) are the maiden fish, while the lower down sampling site has the repeat spawners. As far as I can work out,  Whitling  do not spawn more than twice. When the nets operated in Spring, I used to go down and tag kelts that they caught and found that Whitling kelts tagged in March and April were returning as mended fish in July and August, which would explain why they were only at the bottom site on the College Burn by early Autumn. Though Whitling are not confined to the Till and are found elsewhere in the catchment, the Till seems to be their main area and it is only in the burns of the Cheviots that we ever find adult Whitling during summer electric-fishing surveys. In amongst the Whitling and Sea-trout there were four salmon, not little, June,  Grilse, but 6 to 9lb fish. Tagged all of them with yellow floy tags and also put acoustic tags in two of them - please look out for tags if you are fishing the river. All very good condition fish, especially the 9lber, which looked great. On the way back, did a reconaissance of the river at Norham for electric-fishing sites for a forthcoming event at which I hope to produce Sea-lamprey larvae and then collected a scale-packet from Carham that an angler wants read. Back in the office sorted out all the scale and tissue samples taken today and updated the databases. Told one of the smolts tagged on the Yarrow has finally turned up at Philiphaugh after taking a month to travel the 7kms. Wasn't expecting that sort of thing and will need to think about what it means.

Thursday 3rd June: Down to the nets at Berwick again. Bright and sunny, which are just as bad conditions for netting as for angling as, unlike drift nets, these nets are not invisible. A breeze ruffling the surface, though, which is always useful. Starting catching a few Whitling in each shot, then a lovely Summer Salmon which was tagged. A Sea-trout of about 10lbs then turned up, then 19 Whitling and Sea-trout in a single shot, which is a good haul at any time of year. The next shot had a couple of Whitling and another Salmon and then I lost count as the shot after that had eight salmon in it and half a dozen Sea-trout. That's too many Salmon to process fully unless set up for it with lots of tubs and aerators, so half were just tagged without even measuring and got back into the water immediately. Two others were measured as well as tagged but only two were fully processed as well as being tagged. Some more good shots of Whitling and Sea-trout to give a total of 10 lovely Summer Salmon (no small, June, Grilse today) and several boxes of trout. One Whitling had a fresh lamprey wound on it and a Sea-trout looked as if it had had its adipose fin clipped off, which is the international recognition sign for a fish with a microtag in its snout - I'll bring down my detector next time and check this fish. A couple of shots brought in salmon smolts that slipped straight back into the water.  The news from the fish markets is that they are full of sea-trout, which is bad news for the price, though why one of the best eating fishes on the planet should ever suffer from gluts and lack of demand seems quite wrong: there have been times when the netsmen here have only got 50p each for superb Whitling! As there is no water in the river, all these trout must be piling up somewhere in the lower Tweed, with Summer Salmon in amongst them. All the fish I've seen this week, both trout and salmon have been in very good condition. According to the RSPB and others, sea-bird colonies all down the North Sea coast are starving and not breeding because of lack of Sandeels - but Sea-trout also eat Sandeels and the last few years have been very good for Sea-trout both here and to the south. Either Sea-trout are finding Sandeels that birds can't or are feeding on something else, but there's clearly no shortage of food in the North Sea for them.

Friday 4th June:  A correction to what I've said in the last two entries. I'd assumed that the fish I was tagging down at Berwick were all Summer Salmon, simply from the time of year. However, I've now looked at their scales and while some are Summer Salmon, others are Spring Salmon and some will need measuring to define. Technically, Spring Salmon have narrower-ringed, Winter, growth at the edge of their scales while Summer Salmon have wider-ringed, Summer growth at the edge of theirs. Just a little growth beyond the winter will make a fish a Summer Salmon, so the difference can be very small between the two classifications. 

In the morning, the monthly joint meeting with RTC bailiffs and then the afternoon dealing with admin and correspondence. Still one or two smolts coming in to the Yarrow trap, but we've finished elsewhere, the low water levels have had signficant impacts on movements this year.