Saturday 24th July: Downloaded the acoustic listening station at Ladykirk and found one of the salmon tagged in the estuary on the 10th of June had finally got that far. On to the nets at Paxton House to do more tagging, they had had about 40 yesterday, the majority Salmon, so sounded good.  However, today the water was brown-stained, "Black Water", which is one of the many things netsmen say is not good for catching Salmon. Only caught a dozen or so, mostly Sea-trout, and a couple of smallish Grilse. According to the netsmen, catches of Sea-trout have picked up again along the East coast after a comparative lull and the market is again full.

Monday 26th July: On leave

Tuesday 27th July: Electric-fishing on the Leader below the office in the morning, back at the sites that should have been done first. We have two quantitative sites here, side by side as a pair we monitor annually. One is always a riffle, the other changes between being a riffle and glide and we are looking to see how this affects numbers. This year, both are riffles and at the first we got 489 salmon fry and 73 salmon parr (from a stream length of 11m and average width of 15-16m), a handful of trout fry, a few Baggies and Beardies and half a dozen Eels. At the other site we got 673 salmon fry and 39 salmon parr (from a stream length of 11.0m and average width of 16-17m), just four Eels, a few Beardies, lots of small Baggies and four Grayling fry. So, combined together,  22m length of riffle on  the Leader produced over 1100 salmon fry and 112 salmon parr (and the calculated total populations of these two sites will be higher than the actual numbers caught as this is estimated from the declining totals caught in the three successive electric-fishing passes made at each site). It is of interest that these good numbers of fry come from the Leader, the dirtiest, siltiest tributary on the Tweed. At the edges of the electric-fishing sites, the silt could be seen coating the stones, but it is obviously not enough to affect the salmon fry numbers. It's worth remembering that silt gives fertility to water and to rivers and it's one reason why the Leader is such a productive river. One factor that has to be remembered on the Tweed is that around 20% of our salmon smolts migrate after just one winter in the river, which means that an element of the parr population has gone by the time electric-fishing starts in July. As the lower Leader is a warmer, lowland, area, there is probably  a higher proportion than average of one year old smolts produced from these sites, so these parr totals don't fully reflect  total production - all we see when we sample here is the parr that will become two year old smolts. This is one of the reasons we have moved away from this type of quantitative sampling and now use Fry Index instead, concentrating on the fry as we know all of this year group will be present at sampling time.

It was interesting to see 50 salmon on the FishTweed website for Monday - that matches with the acoustic tagged fish we found at Ladykirk on Saturday which had taken since the 10th of June to get that far but had obviously decided to move on the recent water.

Wednesday 28th July: Out with James, Kenny and Shaun electric-fishing. The first site was on the Teviot, just above Hawick which produced 212 salmon fry and 91 salmon parr out of an area 15m long and 11-12m wide (good boulder habitat here, hence the high proportion of parr). Next was a site at the bottom of the Jed, which gave 169 salmon fry and 30 parr from an area 11.5m long and 11-12m wide - a dozen Grayling fry here as well. These were around 100m long, so the size of the smaller salmon parr despite having emerged from the gravel at the same time as the salmon fry which were around 60mm long here - Grayling are very fast growing fish when young. The last site was at the bottom of the Kale, which gave 342 salmon fry and 37 salmon parr out of a section 20m long and 7m wide. Here, though, salmon shared with trout as there were also 98 trout fry and 47 trout "parr" as well as a handful of Grayling fry, a result of there being an area of "Glide" in the section as well as the usual Riffle. Most of these trout parr were 5-6" in length, just the sort of fish Victorian trout fishers filled their creels with and thought they had had a good day's "trouting" - but only one was over 8" and so regardable as "takeable" today. The sizes of the salmon fry from the  sites covered today is also of interest. On the upper Teviot 12% were under 50mm: at the bottom of the Jed 6% were under 50mm but on the lower Kale 36% were under 50mm! Why should there be so many more small salmon fry here compared to elsewhere ? The Kale is a rich river and its lower zone is in the warmer lowlands, both good for growth.   The most likely explanation is the area of "Glide" in the section that also explains the presence of the older trout - such deeper, slower, water is not prime habitat for salmon fry and so is where the smaller ones that are unable to hold a territory in the faster, Riffle water that is the prime habitat, end up when displaced. Having to live alongside larger trout that can eat them is one of the penalties that salmon fry pay for "failure" - the inability to hold a territory in prime habitat. There's no Social Security for salmon fry, they either win their fight for a home in the Riffles or end up displaced and vulnerable "on the street", down-and-out amongst the trout. It's this survival of only the very fittest, though, that makes Salmon what they are and keeps the species strong.

The photo attached shows salmon fry from the Teviot site: the "Winner" fry is almost double the size of the "Loser" fry, which are on their way out and will not survive. This ruthless competition means that only the fry that do best under the local conditions survive to have a chance of breeding - and as they will return to their home areas to breed with other Winners from the same area, their local adaptations will be passed on to the next generation. In a hatchery, however, the Losers survive in the easy, soft, protected conditions to give the impression of better survival -but when returned to the wild, their fate / genes catch up with them and they die anyway.  Additionally, as the Winners get softened up and physically changed by hatchery life, they may also die when returned to the wild, though they would have survived if left in the river.

Thursday 29th July: In the office all day. Weekly meeting in the morning, then  admin and catch stats, while everyone else busy getting ready for the Kelso show tomorrow.

Friday 30th July: At the Kelso show, starting early to electric-fish and get fish for the display aquarium.