What We Do

2021 is the third year of our Smolt Tracking Study monitoring the in river survival of smolts.  By tagging a sample of smolts leaving the Gala Water with tiny tracking tags, we can monitor how many survive their journey out to sea and where most smolt losses occur in the river.    

There are question marks over how many of the Salmon leaving our rivers are returning as adults to spawn. To try and answer these questions, the Tweed Foundation are using Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags to monitor the return rates of Salmon to the Gala Water.

The Tweed Trout + Grayling Initiative (TTGI) is a flagship programme driving the self sustained management of the Tweed's Trout and Grayling fisheries.

By floy tagging adult Salmon upon their return to the Tweed, we can monitor the proportion of running fish that are caught by anglers and how often they are caught.

We are part of the Scottish River Temperature Monitoring Network (SRTMN), a national project run by Marine Science Scotland to monitor the water temperatures in rivers throughout Scotland.

Every year we carry out an extensive electro-fishing monitoring programme to monitor the numbers of juvenile Salmon and Trout throughout the Tweed catchment.

We run three fish counters throughout the catchment, one on each of the Ettrick, Gala and Whiteadder.  This enables us to monitor the numbers of running fish returning to each tributary to spawn.

We run the Gala Smolt Trap each year to get an estimate of the total smolt production from the Gala Water.

With catch records going back to the 19th century, we can monitor the long term trends in the Tweed's Salmon populations.

By "reading" the growth rings on fish scales (much like on trees), we can learn about the life histories of individual fish.

We are carrying out several studies to monitor the effects of bird predation on the numbers of fish in the Tweed.