19/07/2012 - Eliburn

Water - See first paragraph
Weather - OK, a bit chilly around 6pm as the wind got up, before dying down into quite a nice evening
Time - 1pm-9pm
Method - Meat cubes, maggots, sweetcorn, floating bait
Total - See end of report
Species - Roach, Perch, Ide, Gudgeon.

A long overdue trip through to Livi kicked off in the early afternoon. The wettest April-June spell on record followed by a couple of big July downpours had the reservoir at its capacity and as a consequence, the water was a bit muddier looking than normal. Saying that, the visibility wasn't much different to usual.

A little surprisingly, as it was the best weather in a while, it wasn't too busy. We settled into the Railings Peg with two tactics. Firstly some chopped meat out on the bottom and then maggots under a float at varying depths until we found some fish.

2-3lb Carp in the surface

There were plenty of fish in the surface including some small carp although they largely disappeared from our immediate vicinity as things progressed. I was into fish on the drop pretty quickly managing to land one Roach whilst losing two more Roach plus a decent Ide and a wee Perch. I was fishing reasonably shallow (18 inches - 2ft) below the surface and was having most interest on the drop with a few maggots sprinkled on and around my float at regular intervals. Whilst there were some Ide getting involved, it was mostly Roach that were interested just below the 'surface layer'.

Primo condition Roach

My fishing buddy was fishing a little deeper than me and was having a bit more success. As usual, there were spells of little happening interspersed with bursts of activity as fish seemingly came into range. In between this I'd target wee Perch deeper down in the margins to boost numbers a bit. When we were both doing this a larger than normal Perch of 9 inch was taken, until that point our biggest Perca had been 5.5inch.

The monster Perch

All this time and for the rest of the session we didn't get so much as a line-bite on the bottom bait. Very disappointing. This despite chucking out sweetcorn and some extra meat cubes to try and attract some fish in to feed.

There were some other guys fishing opposite us and down in the Dam Corner peg. they were catching regularly enough as well, bith using poles and looking mostly like they were into some Roach.

Gudgeon - lovely wee fish

As it neared 9pm and the end of our permit, we were running out of maggots, so therefore struggling to find much interest from fish taking bait in the drop. So we decided to give the head of the pond a shot as it's usually a safe bet. We were quickly seeing our floats pulled under by small Perch and as it turned out, some Gudgeon too. These were all on one or two maggots. It's also where I connected with a comedy perch of 3.75 inch.

We did try some floating bait too, but nothing was feeding on the surface (other than the odd seagull).

Me (16)
Perch x 10 - 3.75"-6"
Roach x 4  - 7"-11.5"
Gudgeon x 2 - 5"-5.5"

Him (18)
Perch x 5 - 4"-9"
Roach x 10 - 7.5"-11"
Ide x 2 - 15.5"-16"
Gudgeon x 1 - 5.5"