It's a fairly nondescript sort of morning with a lot of cloud and a bit of damp in the air.  We have a fairly stiff easterly breeze blowing across the dale so it feels colder than the weekend.  The prospect is for a surprisingly dry week ahead so the river will drop quite quickly.

I am meeting a rep from Natural England up at the Tarn tomorrow to discuss the control of cormorants.  Since Simon went back on duty there have been fewer sightings, but my guess is that it will not take long for hungry cormorants to get used to the presence of the scarecrow and when they start arriving in numbers in October we will have a repeat of the scale of predation that we saw last winter.  Rainbow trout are an expensive way of feeding cormorants.

I was up at the Tarn first thing yesterday morning finishing off a bit of a tidy up in the boathouse.  It's now easier to get into the boat off the gangway and over the closed season I will remove the last of the redundant gear in the boathouse.

Ian