Southern fishery developed into top quality runs water with a few surprises.


A hugely popular Dorset venue has revealed plans to give one of its waters a massive make-over.

Todber Manor has given Total Carp details of its plans to overhaul the complex’s Wadmill Lake, with massively improved pegs, new fish, an increased average size of carp and one very special target specimen.

“Wadmill has been left to its own devices for a while now so we wanted to work on it to produce a great runs water for our anglers,” Todber’s Mark Brown told TC. “We’ve already completed most of the work on the bank. Where there used to have old wooden decking in the swims we’ve now ripped them out and produced 30 woodchipped pegs with most being big enough to take a two-man bivvy with ease. On top of that we’ve also added a wide, stone path all the way around the lake making access dead easy.”

It’s not just on the bank that the guys at the fishers have been hard at work though, as Mark revealed:

“We’ve also changed the stocking of the lake massively,” he continued. “We’ve netted the entire lake, removing over 2000lb of silverfish and another 2000lb of carp. Everything under 6lb has gone and we’ve added over 300 bigger carp from our stock ponds, including a number of 20s.”

With the removals and the new stocking, the average size of the fish in Wadmill is now around 10lb, with over 800 carp now in the lake giving a good spread of weights from 6lb up to over 23lb.
 
It might not be the biggest fish that anglers are after though, with Mark also revealing that there’s one resident most carpers will want to see in their landing net.

“We’ve stocked a very distinctive koi called Chalky into Wadmill and put a bounty on it,” added Mark. “It’s not the biggest fish in there, at around 19lb, but the first angler to get him on the bank will win themselves a great tackle prize.”


Wadmill will be reopening the anglers as soon as the work on the water has been completed, with the fishery hoping that it should be back in action sometime next month.

Despite all of the improvements to Wadmill, ticket prices to fish the water will remain the same for the coming year at £10 for the day and £20 for 24hours.

For more details on fishing at Todber Manor, click here.

The target fish, Chalky with a bounty on its head.