Buying a Carp Fishing Lake... part 4

Buying a Carp Fishing Lake... part 4

Clearing the lakes of snags... and fallen trees was an easier job than I had first thought,  Josh & Curtis did an amazing job of winching / dragging all the old trees out and even found an old sunken rowing boat at the bottom end of Vintage lake. Chopping up the trees into logs was a big task and overall, the whole process too around two weeks. My friend Joe offered to go down to help for 3 weeks from the start of December, clearing the smaller branches and bank edges, then burning the debris, there were 4 fires going 24/7 for literally a month.

The guys were committed to another project, but they managed to get an extra 3 days in early December, to clear out the stock pond.

Sami was busy chopping trees down where swims and the lodge would be going and then dragging them away for disposal with his tractor.

Fencing & Gates...So we needed about 300M of fencing installed at the front entrance, along with a 4M wide double gate. My team started that mid December, just in time for the planned fish stocking of Vintage lake in the last week of December.

The initial Fish Stocking....Fish are typically stocked in the colder months, water temperature circa 8 degrees, so that’s what the fish farmer had advised me to do. I only planned to add additional stock to Vintage Lake initially, ready for opening by August 2026 and then add stock to Vault Lake in December 2026, ready to open Vault Lake end March 2027.

My friends Keith, Steve & Adam went down to verify the stocking, as I was stuck working on a project oversees and couldn’t get away. They weighed, took of video of every fish, a total of 65 were added up to 49lbs, a mix of both Mirrors & Commons, plus a little character orange fish aptly named Jasper by Adam.

‘Jasper’

As I write this, on 13th January 2026, I plan to go to the fishery in early February 2026 with my Lake Manager for a week, to catch on progress and plan the next steps. Need to order the lodge, solar panels, the list goes on and on.

See you in Part 5....with hopefully some swims finished!