JUNE
As the weather goes, June was a very good month.
Apart from a bit of rain in the second week that slightly affected the river level, we enjoyed some very good long dry warm spells.
This always makes life a bit easier when you are getting on with the outside jobs. Grass cutting takes up more of our time just now and the tractor and topper have been busy going over a lot of the pathways. The old barge was used to move the tractor and topper up and down the river to some areas where access is not easy.
We are getting on top of some areas of Hogweed and Japanese Knotweed where they are being regularly cut back. There has been more work done along the footpath linking the Fishery up to Perth. If you are of reasonable health with good footwear then it is worth the walk to take in some of the wildlife and wildflowers that are out just now.
There were a couple of events at the Fishery this month with the Macmillan big trout charity event on the 12th, and on the 18th American world champion Steven Rajeff was also there, passing on some of his record breaking skills that have seen him win the International World Casting Championship thirteen times.
There was also some time spent at the fishery clearing areas of weed to improve the fishing. The old netting winch was used to pull a drag across the bottom which helped to thin out and remove the weed.
Further down the estuary there was another day out for a group of walkers, headed up by Perth &Kinross council rangers. They were walking part of the “Coronation walk” which was part of the council’s Perth 800 activities. When it came to crossing the river, Tay Salmon Fisheries helped ferry more than twenty walkers across to the Elcho Castle side using a traditional netting cobble. The group, made up of all ages, enjoyed their day out and the weather was good for the crossing.
The bees have been very busy the last few weeks, and we managed to get a full “super” off the hive this month. This has been spun and jarred, a bit earlier than last year.
Before the month ended we took delivery of a traditionally built netting cobble from boat builder John Ferguson. This was the first of two cobbles we will be using on the river when we start running boat trips from the Willowgate Fishery later this summer.
The odd heavy shower of rain at the end of the month did not make any difference to the river level.
Dago
