On the 1st of the month the duck shooting season got underway on the estuary, and this year we saw a few more shooters than usual out on opening day.
The weather was good early in the month but then we had a lot of gales and heavy rain for a long spell and the river level was soon away back up again.
Tay Salmon Fisheries were happy to assist the District Fisheries Board with a salmon tagging experiment down on the estuary at the end of August and into early September.
This was to help work out what proportion of autumn run fish got caught by rod and line further up the system. There was limited success on this as fishing some of the old netting stations was hampered by debris on the bottom of the river bed that had accumulated over the years of no netting, then the weather broke and the rains put the river in spate making netting more difficult.
For all that we did manage to get some fish tagged and safely returned to the system. Hopefully we can have another go at it next season and get a better run at it.
A lot of our work this month was inside work, with one of the old bothies getting a bit of a make over. Tiling and painting took up most of the time during the wet spell, but it’s always good to have some inside work for when the weather goes against you.
As the month moved on so did the swallows, sand martins and house martins. We have also seen good numbers of geese overhead as they make there way back.
Up at the Willowgate Fishery the resident swans have done well and still have six of their cygnets with them.
The last few days of the month finally brought some decent weather, we had slow misty starts to the day then the sun finally getting through to give us a bit of heat. By the 30th the river was settling back down again.
